D, as in my first initial, because I was David Diego, then came my brother Daniel, then came my brother Diego Gerardo, and then my mother needed another name that began with D when she was pregnant for the fourth time. My father Diego had little influence over my mother when it came to naming us.

My mother Maria del Carmen was always the boss in our family. She only let on that my father ruled when we were in public, but not always. My mother had already decided that her fourth baby would be born in our apartment at 4545 S. Hermitage Avenue, and no one could talk her out of it.

Of course, my mother was still hoping for the daughter that I should have been. I would have been Debbie if my mother had her way. Even then she wanted names that began with D. So she thought of many names that began with D while pregnant. All of them girl names! No one could convince her of the possibility that she might be carrying a son. Everyone asked her if she had any boy names in mind, but she was so sure that this time she would have the daughter that she always wanted.

The morning of my brother’s birth arrived and a doctor I had never seen before woke us up in our bedroom. He told us to hurry up and get ready for school. There was another doctor with him who would assist in the birth. My father was there, too, but he was too weak from the labor pains to help us get ready for school. My mother claims that my father had morning sickness when she was pregnant with me. Knowing my father, I have a feeling that my mother couldn’t make up such a story.

Anyway, when we came home from school for lunch to watch Bozo’s Circus that May 14, 1962, I had a new little brother, much to my mother’s disappointment. Can you guess his name? That’s right! It began with a D! However, no one was ready for the name my mother had chosen: Dick Martin Rodriguez. Martin was fine because it can be pronounced in Englsih and Spanish. But Dick? Back then, as now, Dick was a nickname derived from Richard, but more importantly, it also referred to the male anatomy more often than not. Even Mexicans knew that.

Everyone questioned my mother’s judgment in her choice of names. Well, she was disappointed not to have the daughter that she wanted, so she didn’t actually have any boy’s names picked. Just by chance, the doctor who delivered my brother was named Dick Martin. And that’s how my brother got his name. I was already feeling embarrassed when I imagined how I would announce that I had a new little brother named Dick Martin in school the next day.

Since he was the youngest brother, he was called Dicky, which made the name a little easier to swallow. I mean, a little more palatable. From then on, everyone called him Dicky. That’s how he printed his name on his school papers.

When we went to Mexico, everyone called him Dicky. After a while, the name Dicky just referred to my brother and no one thought of any body parts. When I went to Mexico last December, everyone asked me about Dicky, as they affectionately remembered him. Well, as he grew older and traveled outside the neighborhood, his name became problematic, for the obvious reasons. He started calling himself Richard or Rick. Most family members had a hard time not calling him Dicky because we had grown so used to calling him Dicky.

Eventually, he legally changed his name to something else. I didn’t know it until one day I saw a hole in the hallway wall of our house at 2509 W. Marquette Road. I asked my mother how the hole got there. She told me that she had pushed and kicked Dicky down the stairs because he had legally changed his name and she was very angry with him because of that. Somehow, as he fell down the stairs, he made a hole in the wall. I couldn’t believe my mother could get that upset because of the name change. Well, Dicky had changed his name to Richard Martin. He was no longer a Rodriguez. I was surprised by my mother’s reaction because, during and after her divorce, she hated my father and everyone in his family. She even hated the Rodriguez surname, even though after her divorce she remained Carmen M. Rodriguez.

I, too, was shocked that Dicky was no longer a Rodriguez. We were always the Rodriguez family no matter what. Nobody in the neighborhood wanted to start any trouble with the Rodriguez brothers. I asked him why he changed his last name and he said he did it because he was a musician, and it was a better stage name. Plus, he got tired of all the insults he received for having a Spanish last name. Well, I had gone through the same situations, but I never even thought of changing my name just for that. In fact, I would toss out my surname like an in-your-face challenge to people whom I knew would be bothered by Mexicans and say my full name: David Diego Rodríguez.

Anyway, he changed his name to Richard Martin and we began calling him Rick slowly but surely. That is, when we didn’t slip into old habits and call him Dicky. As far as his musical career, the name didn’t exactly work out for him because soon there was another certain famous Ricky Martin of Latino pop music who upstaged my brother!

Kim was another memorable Spanish student. She had pierced lips and eyebrows, and she always wore these heavy metal concert T-shirts. She was an exceptionally good Spanish student who always got A’s on every exam. I especially liked the fact that she always laughed at my jokes. Even though she gave the appearance to rebel against any authorative figure, she always did as she was told in class. She always excelled on the Spanish compositions. The one composition I do remember involved her telling a story about something that their family did together. Well, from her composition, I learned that her family was really into heavy metal rock, which I kind of assumed by Kim’s concert T-shirts. Kim told about how her parents really like Ozzy Osbourne and so they took the whole family to Oz Fest. The whole family enjoyed their day together. She told the story quite nicely in Spanish and I could tell that the family enjoyed each other’s company. When the Day of Dead came, Kim painted her face like a skull! She looked really cool like that. All the students in the class liked her skull. My only regret is that I didn’t have a camera to take her picture.

In order to write in Spanish on the computer, you need to set up a Spanish keyboard. If you don’t, you won’t be able to put accents over vowels or type the letter “ñ.”

Spanish students seem to resist typing in Spanish. They would rather go back and insert the accent marks and ñ’s by hand. But that takes extra time and it doesn’t look as good. I always insist that my students type up their papers properly. So, occasionally I have to send them an email from a computer that is not my own. Therefore, I cannot put accent marks and use the ñ.

However, as a Spanish professor, I want to be a role model for my students. In situations such as these, when I write in Spanish, I avoid Spanish words with accent marks and ñ. Most of the time, I’m successful. And, no one has ever noticed because I try to do this as inconspicously as possible.

That’s the title of the Spanish textbook that I now use. I like it better than other textbooks I’ve used for the fourth semester of college Spanish. The students seem to enjoy the book better, too.

However, I often look at the cover and I’m intrigued. Why did the editors put the sculptures from Easter Island on the cover of a Spanish textbook? As far as we know, no one knows what civilization lived on the island and they probably didn’t speak Spanish.

If the editors wanted something ancient and at least slightly related to the Spanish-speaking world, they should have put a pyramid on the cover. The other thing that bothers me about the book is how they feature different Spanish-speaking countries, but not all of them. Notably missing is Spain!

How can they omit Spain? Spain is the mother country, the mother culture! But other than those two defects, the book is the best one I’ve used so far for fourth-semester college students.

Mi hermanita is a real Mexicana. My sister Delia Guadalupe changed many things about our family before and since her birth. For as long as I can remember, my mother never failed to remind me of my main failure, in my mother’s eyes, as her firstborn son. I wasn’t born a girl. Ever since she was a little girl, she always wanted to have a daughter. If only I had been a girl, my mother would always remind me, I would have been her little Debbie! My mother didn’t really want to have as many children as she did, but she kept trying to have the daughter that I never was. My sister finally gave my mother great satisfaction! Unfortunately, my mother had to endure four sons before she had a daughter. And just when she thought she was done having children, my youngest brother Joseph was born! And that’s while my parents in the process of getting a divorce!

So my sister’s birth was a great blessing to our family, but especially to my mother. I was always curious as to why my mother named my sister Delia Guadalupe, but she never told me why she didn’t name my sister Debbie. I was preparing myself to have a little sister named Debbie. From my sister’s birth on, my mother’s world revolved around my hermanita. My sister was born on September 29, so the 29th of every month, my mother would have a mini-birthday party for my hermanita. My mother really loved her only daughter and she wasn’t afraid to show who was her favorite offspring. My brothers and I didn’t mind the emotional neglect because we also loved having a baby girl in the house. And we got to have a little party every month on the 29th for my sister. Those were exciting times. Until February rolled along. You see, not being a leap year, February didn’t have a 29th day! My mother worried about what to do the entire week before, but then she had my sister’s birthday celebration on the February 28 even though it wasn’t really her birthday. Then, on March 1, my mother had another party for my hermanita because now she was officially one month older. My mother was so proud of having my sister that we went to Mexico to show her off to the family when she was three months old.

I, too, loved having a little sister. Occasionally, my mother would let me feed her, bathe her, change her diapers. Since I was six, I loved taking care of my little brothers, so I had plenty of experience by the time my sister was born. I always loved playing with my brothers, but having a sister was even more fun, although I’m not sure why. If I went to the store for my mother, she would always tag along. I would give her rides on my bike. If she had money, she would ask me to take her to the store for candy. Joe’s Store was directly across the street from our house, but my sister wasn’t allowed to cross the street. So she would ask me to take her. She only asked whenever she had money. One day, she wanted to go to the store and I took her. Only, I didn’t realize that she didn’t have any money until she asked, “What are you going to buy me?”

One summer, my mother went to Mexico with my brothers. I stayed home with my father and sister. She was about four years old then. I’m not sure why they went and we didn’t, but my mother always had these incomprehensible ways of thinking, and it was better not to ask. It was easier just to accept whatever decision she made. Well, my father would take care of us, and I would take care of my sister. I was solely responsible for my sister. I loved it. I delivered the newspapers early in the morning before she woke up. Then, when I returned home, I would “make” her breakfast of cereal with milk and toast with butter and/or jelly. Then I would give her a bath, dress her, and braid her hair. I fantasized about how someday I would have a daughter of my own.

I began to understand why my mother was so excited by having a daughter. One day, my sister told me that she didn’t want me in the bathroom while she took a shower. I was hurt by this, but I understood perfectly well what she meant. She suddenly became conscious that she was nude in front of someone else. So I left her clothes in the bathroom and left. Moments later, I heard her screaming. I ran into the bathroom, which was filled with steam, and I saw my sister cowering in the corner under showerhead avoiding the scalding-hot water pouring down near her. She was crying. I shut the water off until she calmed down. Before I left the bathroom, I turned the water on for her and adjusted to the temperature so that it would be warm, but sister kept telling me to keep making colder, colder.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was hoping to have a daughter. I would have named her Veronica, not Debbie. My wife thought I was crazy (¡Estás loco!) because I didn’t want a son. I guess I always remembered how I always looked after my sister. Anyway, we ended up having three sons and no daughters. She didn’t want to keep trying until we had a daughter.

Years later, I lived with my sister for a while soon after I got divorced. I wanted to buy a new house, but I didn’t want to have two mortgages. I waited to buy a new house until I had sold my old house. So I lived with my sister while I was between houses. I always remember how I used to take care of her when she was little. While I lived with her, somehow we reversed roles. Somehow she became my caretaker, my mother. If she was out in the evening, she would call my cell phone to tell me about the dinner that she had left for me in the fridge. If I went out, she would ask me where I was going. When I came home late, she would ask me where I had been. My hermanita had become my mother! Well, it was even worse because I used to take care of her when she was little. I couldn’t wait to move out into my own house! Imagine that. Me, being bossed around by my little sister. ¡Mi hermanita!

One day, we were talking about anything and everything, as we usually did, and the topic turned to our preferred shower temperatures. I’m not sure why, but it did. She said she preferred cold showers. I asked her if she knew why. She didn’t. She couldn’t even think of any logical reason why. I told her I knew why she took cold showers. When I told her what had happened to her under the hot shower, she was amazed. She had forgotten all about that incident. But now she understood why she took cold showers.