Author: David Diego Rodríguez, Ph.D.

I teach Spanish and I am a standup comedian.

Mar Par Chessmen


My one and only chess trophy.

When I attended Gage Park High School, I was on the school chess team. I even lettered in chess! I remember one day I was pulled from one of my classes and told to go the assembly hall. I saw my other teammates from the chess team there. We were attending the athletic awards ceremony where all the school athletes were brought on stage and given the school letter to put on the school jacket. When they called the chess team on stage, the whole assembly burst out into uproarious laughter because no one thought of the chess team as athletes. We chess players didn’t think of ourselves as athletes either, but we really enjoyed receiving the school letter. We were officially school jocks!

When we weren’t playing chess at school, we also played at a chess club that met every Tuesday at the Marquette Park field house. After we played there a few weeks, we were required to join the chess club that was called the Mar Par Chessmen. I’m sure I still have my membership card around somewhere. I really improved my chess skills by playing there and I met quite a few characters there.

I remember the room was always filled with cigar smoke. For some strange reason, no one smoked cigarettes. I remember one player would occasionally blow cigar smoke across the chessboard to try to psyche me out. The winter meetings truly taught me to develop my concentration because a recording droned on monotonously, “Danger! Keep off the ice! Danger! No skating! Thin ice!” even when the temperatures were above freezing and the water in the lagoon wasn’t even close to freezing. Sometimes I hear the voice to this day whenever I see a frozen lagoon or a chess set.

The character I remember the most was Spans. I never learned his full name because everyone called him Spans, just Spans. I thought he was Lithuanian. I also believed he was a retiree. I was 16 at the time so I could have been wrong. A few times, I saw him sitting alone, so I offered to play him, but he told me he was waiting for someone. I only ever saw him play this one player whom I no longer remember because Spans was the more memorable of the two.

Once his partner showed up, Spans would liven up and become a whole different person. He was like a tiger on the prowl. I’m not sure how strong a player he was, but I was always impressed by his demeanor and focus during the game. He always looked like he was just about to checkmate his opponent even before the game began.

However, I don’t recall that he ever won a game. He really wasn’t interested in winning. He just wanted to play a good game. From observing him, I gathered that a good game for him was placing his opponent’s king in check as many times as possible before losing the game. Since this was his favorite part of the game, everyone knew when Spans was on the attack. He would slam down the attacking piece with all his might and yell at the top of his lungs, “CHECK!” The room would tremble slightly and his “CHECK!” would reverberate in the room and his breath would actually clear some of the cigar smoke from around his chessboard. When Spans was on a roll delivering check after check, he would actually drown out the “Danger! Keep off the ice! Danger! No skating! Thin ice!” announcement.

In a good game, he would deliver about ten “CHECK!”s before finally losing the game. And he would play to the very last move and make his opponent checkmate him. “Checkmate!” his opponent would yell at Spans, but with no enthusiasm or emotion compared to Spans’ delivery. Spans would say, “It doesn’t matter that you won. Did you see how many times I checked you? I hope you learned your lesson!”

DDR

Piñatas


Celaya, Guanajuato, México

No Mexican party or picnic is complete without a piñata. Piñatas are usually store-bought nowadays, but once upon a time they were made at home by the hosting family. At some point during the party or picnic, after everyone has eaten, one of the drunk uncles remembers about the piñata and struggles to hang it from a nearby tree. The children form a circle around the piñata while watching one blindfolded child attempting to strike the piñata with a stick.

Of course, the fix is in because no one wants one of the first few children to break the piñata right away. Every kid should get a turn to hit the piñata. Before a child gets a turn, he or she must be blindfolded and spun around a few times. This child is so disoriented by then that he or she must be pointed in the direction of the piñata and starts swinging wildly at the piñata. Meanwhile, everyone sings the piñata song: “Dale, dale, dale, / No pierdas el tino / Porque si lo pierdes / Pierdes el destino.” Everyone sings the piñata song repeatedly until the child swinging the stick gets so sick of hearing it that he or she finally breaks the piñata.

I have broken a few piñatas in my lifetime. But I definitely enjoy watching children break them a lot more. When I was in Mexico as a boy, my aunt made a piñata from a clay pot that she filled with candy. I was so fascinated watching her make it. Ever since, I have believed that this is the truly authentic way to make a piñata. However, when the piñata breaks, those flying shards could seriously injure someone. Never mind the swinging stick that’s still swinging as the children are diving toward the falling candy! Perhaps the new supermercado piñatas are safer for everyone involved.

Once, before my sister went to Mexico, she asked me if I wanted her to bring me back anything. I knew I was supposed to ask for something, anything, so that she would feel useful and wanted. Finally, I said, “Yes, I’d like a piñata bat.” “What is a piñata bat?” she asked. I wasn’t actually sure if there was such a thing as a piñata bat, but surely some ingenious Mexican must have invented one since there are so many piñatas in Mexico. My younger sister has always looked up to me, so I didn’t want her to think I was as soft as the tortilla of a tostada after sitting on the buffet table at the birthday party all day because the kids found out it was made with tongue. “What!” I told my sister, “You never heard of piñata bat? What kind of Mexican are you?” She was visibly embarrassed. “Okay, I’ll bring you back a piñata bat,” she promised.

Imagine my surprise when she returned from Mexico proudly waving a piñata bat over her head. “You don’t know how much trouble I went through to get this!” she said. “I hope you appreciate it.” And then I realized she was actually swinging the bat at me. But I dodged it since I never had the ambition to be a piñata. Apparently no one in Mexico had ever heard of a piñata bat, either. However, my sister actually found one. And a beautiful bat it was! Someone had carved designs in the bat and painted it in many bright colors. The bat is so beautiful, I have never actually brought it out of storage to break a piñata! At every party, my sister keeps asking about the whereabouts of my piñata bat.

When I was a boy, my mother made a piñata so indestructible that not even a crowbar could break it! But it always looked like it was just about to break. So, everyone took several turns trying to break it. After the third turn, no one even wore the blindfold, and we were using a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. But alas, the piñata would not yield its precious cargo.

When it was Lupe’s turn to break the piñata, she insisted on wearing the blindfold and using the stick. We tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. So, we spun her around a few extra times after she was blindfolded and we didn’t point her in the direction of the piñata. We started singing the piñata song and Lupe started swinging. And swinging and swinging. And missing and missing. Then, someone shouted, “Go to your left” and Lupe turned to her left and swung. And missed, of course, because there was no piñata there. “Go straight,” someone else shouted. And Lupe moved forward a few steps and missed again.

All the children started giving her different directions and she would follow them. Someone had the brilliant idea to have her go outside of our backyard. No matter what direction we gave her she obeyed it. Soon she was going around the block blindly swinging wherever she imagined the piñata to be. We all tried not to laugh to make this last as long as possible. We actually went around the block on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Lupe was followed by all the children at the birthday party and quite a few adults, too. Soon some of the neighbors also started following. At least a hundred people where now following Lupe, who was oblivious to all this excitement. We finally led her back to our yard and everyone else came into the yard. Finally, we told Lupe where to swing and she broke the piñata! She never even knew that she left the backyard. Even after we told her several days later, she didn’t believe the story!

DDR

Unfinished business


ddr typing
A young aspiring David Diego Rodríguez

Well, I’ve been thinking about all my lifelong goals and how I haven’t completed most of them. There are so many things I have yet to do. I’ve started so many things that I’ve forgotten to go back to them to finish them. I’ve started writing several novels but haven’t gotten past the opening lines. I have already finished a comedy play. Of course, I’ve been working on it for 25 years now. However, I’m almost done editing it. Really! I have about eighty pages and it’s almost done. Any day now!

But I have a lot of other things that I haven’t finished either. I have a utility sink in the basement that I probably won’t install before I sell the house.  I have a set of French books so I can learn French someday. Ditto for the Italian and Latin books. I have an unopened jigsaw puzzle of the John Hancock building when it was the world’s tallest building. I’m almost done with my website that I started four years ago. NOT!

DDR

A little misunderstanding


On a wing and a prayer.

In the late 1950s, my parents and I lived in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where I was born. My mother told my father that she would only marry him and come to America if she could visit her family in Mexico every year. My father agreed even though he would never return to Mexico ever again.

About 1957, my mother learned that her father was dying in Mexico. She bought plane tickets to visit her father on his deathbed. My mother took me with her even though I was still a baby. My father drove us to the airport. He always had trouble driving anywhere without getting lost. When he asked for directions, he would only confuse himself even more. Well, my mother and I were supposed to fly to Mexico from Newark. My mother told me this story several times. However, I remember the story became more exciting and compelling every time she told it.

Well, my father asked for directions to the airport in Newark. At that time, neither my father or mother understood English very well and they spoke English even more poorly. So, when my father asked for directions to the airport in Newark, the man misunderstood my father and gave directions to the airport in New York, . Well, my parents and I ended up going to the wrong airport. By the time we arrived at the right airport, they told my mother that our plane had already departed. She began crying because she would not be able to see her father before he died. Someone with a private plane heard her crying and when she told them why, he arranged for us to fly on a charter flight to Texas. From there, we flew to Mexico.

When we arrived at her father’s house in Mexico, my mother saw vigil candles lighted all over the house. When her family answered the door, they started crying even more when they saw us. My mother started crying thinking that she had arrived too late to talk to her father. “Did he die already,” my mother asked. “No,” my aunt answered. “He’s still alive?” my mother asked. “Yes,” my aunt said. “Then why is everyone crying?” my mother asked. “We thought you were dead. Your plane crashed!”

DDR

Politically (in)correct


Riddle Comedy Club, Alsip, Illinois

I haven’t been to a comedy club for a couple of months now, but I keep thinking of one joke in particular that I heard while I was there. You have to remember that comedy clubs are the last bastion of politically incorrect jokes. So, everything goes there. In a way, it’s very refreshing to be able to go back in time a couple of decades or so to when free speech meant exactly that.

Anyway, the joke I keep remembering makes me laugh every time I recall it. I don’t even remember the name of the comedian, but I saw him at Riddles at the open mic night. “Are there any Mexicans here?” he asked, I assumed he asked this because he was not of the Mexican persuasion. No one answered up–not even me. I wanted to say, “I’m Mexican,” but I couldn’t get the nerve to shout it out. Besides, I wanted to hear what he would say if no Mexicans were present.

After a long silent pause, he asked, “How many Mexicans does it take to change a light bulb?” No one answered and after another long pause, he said, “One. They’re just like everyone else!” And everyone laughed, but I think I laughed the loudest.

DDR