One of the most memorable Spanish classes I ever took was a Medieval seminar on Spanish literature at UIC. There were only four students in the seminar. The professor, Reinaldo Ayerbe-Chaux, taught the course with great enthusiasm. So much so that I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation on some Medieval text. One of our writing assignments involved transcribing a Medieval text written on parchment into Spanish. I don’t know why, but I was truly fascinated by this project. The language of the parchment was archaic but comprehensible. The alphabet was moderately different from the modern Spanish alphabet. Some parts of the text taxed my brain for me to decipher the writing and then comprehend what was stated. Little did I realize that this was good training for me as a Spanish professor when I would have to decipher student compositions with illegible handwriting before I could interpret the student’s intended message. But, hey, I love puzzles!
Well, the highlight of our seminar came at the end when we went on our field trip to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Their Spanish department had the largest collection of Medieval Spanish texts in the world. However, most of them were on microfilm. Professor Ayerbe-Chaux said we just had to go to the university and see the collection for ourselves. I offered to drive our class to Madison, Wisconsin, in my minivan, which he thought was a good idea. Of course, UIC paid for my gas.
Professor James Compton, who is now retired, also wanted to go with us since he had graduated from there. Maybe I’m just too easily amused, but I had a lot of fun on this trip. I enjoyed looking at all the Medieval texts even if they were only on microfilm. Professor John Nitti gave us copies of two of their publications, which I shall someday read. But the highlight of the trip for me was meeting the faculty. Professor Compton was happy to see his dissertation adviser Lloyd Kaston once again. He was now professor emeritus, but he still had an office in the Spanish department, and he still was actively transcribing Medieval texts. When we went to his office, he just happened to be napping. He was ninety-something years old, so he was entitled to nap whenever he wanted! Well, I got to see four generations of faculty in the same room!
I will always remember this seminar because Professor Ayerbe-Chaux gave the entire class, all of us, copies of a book by Don Juan Manuel that he had published. He had read the original texts by Don Juan Manuel and then transcribed them. He was even gracious enough to autograph the book for me!
That sounds like a very good idea, in theory anyway. The first day of the semester, I always give The Speech about how to excel in my Spanish class. Number One on the list is coming to class each and every day. Why? Well, class, you should come to class because attendance is 15% of your overall grade. I like seeing my students in class, and if you come to class, you might actually learn something. Most students do come to class just because it’s required. Others, however, think attendance should be optional and nothing I say will persuade them to come to class more frequently.
A few years back, a student enrolled in my class who took skipping class to a new level. He showed up the first day of class and then I didn’t see him again for two weeks. I couldn’t figure out why he would miss so many classes.
One day, as I was reading the university newspaper, I noticed a guest opinion piece in the editorial section titled, “Let’s all go to class,” in which the author stresses the importance of attending class. In fact, he keeps harping on it even though he missed a lot of classes the previous semester to sleep, play video games, and almost finish writing late papers for his English class.
In principle, I agreed with the idea that all students should attend class, but something about this piece made me suspicious. The author was named Patrick. So I immediately remembered him. That’s one thing you should know about me. I don’t often remember names unless your name is David, Catherine, Adam, Yolanda, Patrick, Poindexter, or Allouissius.
So I suddenly realized that the author Patrick was the student whom I had only seen on the first day of class and then never again. About two weeks later, he showed up to class again and I asked him if he was the author of the guest opinion. He blushed and admitted that he was, in fact, the author. I asked him if he had ever considered following his own advice. He looked at me as if it had never occured to him! I didn’t see him in class again for another two weeks. His attendance the rest of the semester was very sporadic and somehow he managed to pass the course!
Today I went to the UIC Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I really wasn’t sure what to expect because I had no idea what the play was about other than I knew that the title characters came from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Well, last week I saw Hamlet at the UIC Theater and I liked the production so much that I decided that I would see Stoppard’s play today. Okay, so I’ll never make a living writing reviews, but I thought today’s play started out rather slowly. There were some witty interchanges between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but sometimes it didn’t hold my interest. Well, I actually dozed off for a couple minutes in the beginning of the play.
I supposed it wouldn’t have been so bad if I weren’t sitting in the very front row in the middle right in front of the actors. So there I was front and center. When I woke up, Rosencrantz was staring at me. I felt so embarrassed! After that I tried not to fall asleep again. But I dozed off again–at least two more times. However, no actor noticed me this time.
So about the play, well, since it is a spinoff of Hamlet and it was also produced by the UIC theater department, I was happy to see the same actors reappear. Some of Hamlet’s scenes were repeated for Stoppard’s play. It was very interesting, even though I fell asleep a few times.
Eduardo Garcia was the only real Mexican in the neighborhood. And no one could talk him out of it. Eddy, as he was known, was the neighborhood bully, the terror of the classroom, and the pride and joy of his parents. He had a stocky build, red hair, freckles, blue eyes, and light skin. But he still looked Mexican. His sister Graciela, who greatly resembled Eddy but looked even more Mexican, was also in our grade at Holy Cross School with Eddy and me.
Eddy was a year behind in school because he was so smart, or so he told us. I remember once in the second grade, before school started, he took off his belt and started hitting me with it. I tried unsuccessfully to defend myself. Eddy was much bigger than me. Then the school bell rang and we went in to school. Sister Bartholomew saw that I was crying and asked me why. I tried to tell her in my best English, but the class laughed when I said, “Eddy hitted me with his strap.” Of course, Eddy denied everything in a very believable fashion and that was the end of that incident.
Over the years, Eddy acted as if we were friends. One day, he invited himself to my house after school even though I made all kinds of excuses why he couldn’t come over. I was afraid of him ever since he hit me with his belt. He didn’t listen to me and he came over to house at 4546 S. Marshfield Avenue anyway. He was surprised that the hallway door was always unlocked. He saw my bike in the second-floor hallway outside our apartment door. We never locked the bikes up because no one knew the bikes were there. The next day, my bike is gone. My mother called the police and we go to Eddy’s house to look for my bike. I had described it in detail to the police. I only found the wheels of my bike on another bike. Well, the police made Eddy give me the wheels immediately. And he had to give me the rest of the bike by the next day, or I could call the police again and they would come back with me to Eddy’s house for my bike. Sure enough, the next day, the rest of my bike is in my hallway. After that, Eddy didn’t talk to me very much anymore, much to my relief. I think he over-reacted and took the entire incident way too personally.
A few years later, we were sitting on the stairs of the field house at Davis Square Park just hanging out until dark, but before curfew, on a warm summer night. It was one of those nights where we were all bonding talking about everything and anything. That night, everyone there at the park was Mexican, except for Chuck, the wannabe Mexican who was actually more Mexican than some of the actual Mexicans there.
Anyway, someone started talking about a previous trip to Mexico and soon everyone began recounting his or her favorite trip to Mexico. Suddenly, Eddy showed up. No one in our group liked him, but everyone was afraid of him. Eddy asked what we were talking about and we told him Mexico. He smiled and immediately took over the conversation, cutting off anyone who tried to say anything. Eddy asked a few questions of everyone such was when and where and how and what they did in Mexico.
Then, he said, “You call that going to Mexico? That’s not going to Mexico!” We knew better than to contradict him. “When I went to Mexico,” he continued, “we drove there in a pickup truck. That’s going to Mexico. I didn’t go to a city and live in a house with relatives. No! I rode on horseback away from all the cities and I slept in a tent. I wore a holster with guns and I hunted for my own food. That’s going to Mexico!”
Well, no one said anything and Eddy finally left. We were relieved when he did. But he really ruined the wonderful night we were having until he showed up. We all agreed that we should all pitch in and send him back to Mexico.
Perhaps I spend way too much time on the Internet. But I don’t think so. Am I addicted? Of course not. I could walk away from the computer at any time! I mean, once I finish this blog entry. And, I’ll stay away from my computer until my next blog entry tomorrow. So you see? I’m not addicted to the Internet!
Okay, I must admit that I have been using computers ever since Bill Gates invented MS-DOS and lifted the C:> prompt from UNIX, with enough slight modifications to make it look original. And, I’ve been using Instant Messages even before AOL offered IMing to their subscribers.
My friend Vito showed me how to send an Instant Message at UIC in 1991. We used to IM each other all the time. In a school of about 25,000 students, there were only about five of us at UIC IMing each other. I would always check to see who was online and then IM them. I really enjoyed IMing strangers out there in cyber space. I’m not even sure why. Now that I think of it, I’ve always loved talking to strangers since I was little–even when they weren’t listening.
Anyway, over the years, I’ve met a lot of people in cyber space through IMing and chat rooms. I love talking to total strangers and I’ve met a few interesting ones. One that I occasionally remember is joie.
One day, out of the blue, she IMs me. How she found me, I’ll never know. I did the asl thing and she told me she was f/27/Phillipines. That is the one thing I noticed about about every female I ever met on the Internet: She is always 27! I mean, ALWAYS!
So I met joie, her screen name, about four years ago when she introduced herself to me. I figured she was just another scammer, so I didn’t take her too seriously. Usually, I just like to chitchat online for awhile and then I never hear from that person again. And usually that’s how it happens.
However, joie was very persistent. I tried everything to discourage her from getting too involved with me, but she insisted. I was too old for her I told her. She lived too far away. Nothing dissuaded her. Age was not a barrier. She was actually an American dental student from Illinois. Her English was very good so I believed her. But something was really amiss. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I kept waiting for her to ask for money or to lay some sort of scam on me. Then one day, I didn’t hear from her anymore.
About a year later, I receive another IM from joie. This time she’s in Singapore. But I thought she was in the Philippines! She told me that she was never even in the Philippines. And, get this, she was still 27! Just to confirm that she was the same person with whom I had spoken before, I asked her to describe me, which she did better than I had expected because she remembered almost every personal fact about me that I had told her.
She still had the same screen name, so I asked her what it meant. Again she told me that is was an acronym for “just on internet enough.” But something was wrong. But what? I still don’t know. Anyway, she still insisted that when she finished her dental internship in Singapore, she would return to Elgin, Illinois, so she could marry me. I could feel the scam coming on.
But wait! She was very serious and sincere about the whole thing. When we chatted, she always wrote in perfect English with very few typos. She was actually quite witty. Then one day, she says that she wants to e-mail me a very personal letter so that I may understand her better. In this letter, she explains how her father had died when she was fourteen. When her mother remarried, her stepfather raped her several times until she went away to college. She was afraid of what he would do to her, so she never reported the rapes. I didn’t know what to make of this letter.
When she IMed me the next time, I told her I was very sorry for what had happened to her. Anyway, she still wanted to marry me. I had been telling her all along that we would never get married for all the reasons that I had alread enumerated to her. But she was persistent! Then she sent me some pictures of herself. They were obviously taken by a professional photographer. She was definitely American, or so I thought as I saw her pictures. She was very pretty with short brown hair and blue eyes. Then, I don’t hear from her for about three months. I figured I would never hear from her again. Good riddance!
Well, one day, three months later, she IMs me again. Why hadn’t she IMed before? She was sick. I keep pressing her for more information and she finally tells me. She has malaria. I don’t really believe her. I’m sure that this time she’ll ask for money. But no! She doesn’t. She is continuing her dental internship despite her illness. She is bedridden for days. Some days, she interrupts our chat so that she can go to the doctor. She promises me that she will get better and then she’ll come to Illinois to marry me.
I keep telling her that we’ll never get married, but she’s persistent. Then, she suddenly stops IMing me. I figured she got sucked up by that mythical black hole in cyber space. Then, I receive this unexpected e-mail from her. She tells me how sad it was that we never got together. She even wrote a poem for me, or so she wrote in her e-mail. In the poem, she writes about all the things we missed out because we never met: our first kiss, getting caught in the rain, walking hand in hand, etc.
About a year later, joie IMs me again. She still has the same screen name, she’s still 27, she’s still in Singapore, she still has malaria, and she still knows enough personal facts about me for me to be sure it’s her.
However, she begins talking to me as if she had never met me. She tells me some facts about herself that I don’t recognize. For example, now she is no longer from Elgin, Illinois. She sends me some more pictures of herself. Only she is no longer white. She’s inexplicably black now. I broach the subject subtlely. But she insists that I’m mistaken.
I’m sure she only wants money from me. But she doesn’t ask for any. I am obviously IMing the same person as before, but something is terribly wrong! What? I don’t know. Suddenly, she stops all communication to me. And that was the last I heard of her. And she never even once asked me for money. I was always awaiting some sort of scam that never materialized.
This joie will always remain an enigma to me. Luckily, I knew better than to get emotionally attached to her. Who she was or what she wanted from me, I’ll never know! But I did learn to be “just on Internet enough.” No more, no less. That’s my joie de vivre.
Chicago USA 