Cognates are words that come from the same Greek or Latin root and resemble each other in English and Spanish. For example, in English, “insect” is very much like “insecto” in Spanish. And “drama” in English is “drama” in Spanish. Words like these cause no problems and, in fact, make it easier to learn Spanish.

The trouble for native-English speakers who learn Spanish are the words that sound alike in both English and Spanish, but have completely different meanings in English and Spanish. You must be careful when translating from English to Spanish or vice versa. Some words require extreme caution when using! For example, if you feel embarrassed in English, do not say, “Estoy embarasada” because you are really saying, “I’m pregnant.” And then you’ll really be embarrassed!

Another problem word is “molestar” that means “to annoy” or “to bother.” “No me molestes” means, “Don’t bother me.” However, if you confuse “molestar” with the English “to molest,” you are referring to a sexual crime punishable by imprisonment. ¡Tengan cuidado!

After my parents’ divorce, I spent a lot of time with my father. Sometimes he would pick me up just so I could accompany him to run his errands and translate for him. He spoke broken English and he was painfully self-conscious about it. So, I would be his translator, although at that time my English wasn’t much better than his. When we spoke to each other, I spoke English and he spoke Spanish; when I first started attending school, he insisted that I speak English so he could learn to speak English, too.

In order to do all his errands, he would find parking somewhere near 18th Street, Loomis Avenue, and Blue Island Street. That meant we would either pay his telephone bill, go grocery shopping, eat at a Mexican restaurant, or see a Mexican movie in Spanish at Teatro Villa. If he managed to find a strategically located parking spot, we could walk to all these places without moving the car. Sometimes he would drive around for fifteen minutes looking for this ideal parking spot. Now that I think of it, we passed up some good parking spaces that were only a block away and I would tell my father, “Just park already!” But he always insisted on finding the closest parking space.

After my father was done with all his errands and we ate at a Mexican restaurant, we would buy are tickets to see a movie at Teatro Villa. All the movies and previews were in Spanish. My father loved coming to this theater because it reminded him of Mexico. We would enter the theater regardless of when the movie started. We usually sat down in the middle of the movie and didn’t get to see the beginning until after seeing the entire second movie and the previews. I had fun trying to figure out what had happened prior to the scenes we were watching. Once the beginning of movie came on again, I liked to see if the movie had foreshadowed the ending. So, my father’s disorganized habits had actually helped me to become a better writer.

There was one movie that we saw that I never quite understood even though we saw it twice; when we returned to Teatro Villa the next week it was showing again, but we decided to see it again. I don’t remember the title, but it took place in downtown Mexico City sometime in the 1960s. This movie was also in Spanish. Anyway, people are being mysteriously murdered one by one. No one can figure out who is murdering them. I forget all the details, but eventually we discover that there is a secret society that still practices human sacrifice following the Aztec rituals. These are businessmen who enter through a hidden door in their office and descend to an underground cave where there is an Aztec pyramid with a sacrificial altar. The murder mystery is then solved, and the murderers are arrested. But the movie did emphasize the importance of Aztec culture in Mexico even to this day.

We saw many movies together over the years at Teatro Villa. I remember seeing a lot of comedies, but my favorites were with Cantinflas, also known as Mario Moreno. He always made me laugh. Cantinflas was a poor Mexican who never caught a lucky break. He was so poor that he always wore raggedy clothes and survived day to day by his natural wherewithal. His poverty was only surpassed by his ineptitude. No matter what job he worked, he performed it incompetently, even disastrously. When the boss asked him if he had done his work, Cantinflas would begin a longwinded explanation that would distract the listener, but he never fully explained if he actually did the job. His boss would finally ask, “Did you do your job?” And Cantinflas would say, “Pues, allí está el detalle” and explain how didn’t do it. He was always incompetent, but extremely lovable. I always laughed at Cantinflas because I could relate to him. I think it was because he reminded me of my father in some ways. In fact, after leaving a Cantinflas movie, my father would start quoting Cantinflas. Sometimes my father talked like Cantinflas even when he wasn’t imitating Cantinflas. My father told me that Cantinflas got his name from the saying, “Cuando entras la cantina te inflas.” Meaning that when you go into the bar, you get full of hot air. My father also told me “Cantinflas” was a combination of the verbs cantar and inflar combined. Cantinflas was the master of talking and talking without really saying anything.

For our family, Sunday was a very special day that began at sunrise and didn’t end until we returned home well after sunset. My parents would get up long before my brothers and me in order to prepare for our big day. My father usually prepared his car by making some last-minute adjustments under the hood and then washing the car in front of the house. My mother would–actually, I’m not sure what my mother did; whenever I woke up early enough to help her, my mother would be very secretive and then tell me to go help my father with the car. Once the car was packed, we would all dress up in our Sunday clothes, which were the very best clothes we owned, and go to Sunday mass at the Mexican church in the neighborhood because the priest said the mass in Spanish. This was a welcome change from the Latin mass at the Lithuanian church where I was really supposed to attend mass with my classmates from the parish grammar school.

After mass, we would all pile into the car, sans seatbelts or child safety seats, and head to the beach, Lincoln Park Zoo, Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, or the Museum of Science and Industry to spend the day there. We usually went somewhere that was free. On the way there, we would stop at el supermercado to buy our food for the picnic. I always thought my mother was packing a picnic basket at home until we went to el supermercado. Anyway, we would buy bolillos, carnitas, chicharrón, atole, and anything else that didn’t require cooking. I guarantee you that nothing tastes better than a bolillo stuffed with carnitas on a beautiful, sunny Sunday at the beach on the Chicago lakefront after going to mass in Spanish! I really loved going to the Museum of Science and Industry and then swimming at the beach afterwards.

Of course, we varied our habits occasionally. Sometimes we would meet friends of the family at the church and ask them to come along with us, or if they had better plans, we would go with them. Once we had a caravan of four cars. This was fun because we would have more children playing together.

Sometimes after mass, we would visit other family members without notice. Sometimes we would go to several houses before we found someone who was actually home! Nothing was ever really planned. Perhaps, that’s why I still like to take spontaneous, unplanned vacations with my sons to this day. When it was time to go home, we would always say good-bye for at least an hour. Well, everyone would say good-bye right away and set a date for the next get-together, but then someone would remember what he or she had been wanting to tell everyone for the longest time. And that, in turn, would remind someone of somebody else who was no longer living in the neighborhood, and so on … But we always had fun!

Well, I don’t want to drag out this good-bye too long. You get the idea. Besides, it’s Sunday and I’m on the way out the door! ¡Adiós!

My parents always argued. About anything and everything. If they were together, they would argue. This may sound like I’m exaggerating, but I never, ever once heard them have a normal conversation. They would always argue over money because my mother always wanted more, and my father didn’t make enough. My mother also wanted to work outside of the house because my father didn’t make enough money, of course. My father wanted her to stay home, so they constantly argued over this, whether she was working or not. When she worked, my father lost partial authority over her. There were certain things that mother could do without my father’s criticism if she was a wage earner. For example, she could buy as many records and magazines as she wanted because she had earned the money herself. Of course, when she stopped working, she continued her same shopping habits causing–would you believe it?–more arguments. While the arguments were never physical, they were certainly passionate.

One Sunday morning, my mother woke me up and asked, “Is this a pair of socks?” I could sense by the anger in her tone of voice that not only was she arguing with my father, but that this was a job for me, as their oldest son, to act as a mediator for them. I was still sleepy because on Saturday nights I liked to stay up late watching old movies on TV. My eyes were barely open, and the room was barely lit because the sun was still rising. “Is this a pair of socks?” my mother asked me again in Spanish, holding up a pair of orlon socks in her hand. I said, “It looks like a pair of socks to me.” “No, this is not a pair of socks!” she yelled. I was now fully awake. I was once again trapped by one of her trick questions.

“Look at these socks,” she said. “Do they match?” Well, in the darkness of my bedroom, they looked like they matched. “Your father wants to wear this pair of socks to church. If he wears these socks to church, we’re not going with him. I would rather burn in hell than be seen with your father in church wearing these socks!” My mother always loved to be overly dramatic. “What’s wrong with those socks?” I asked her, knowing full well that I would be the recipient of my mother’s wrath. “You are just as blind as your father! Look! One sock is blue and one is black!”

I couldn’t see the difference of the colors in the darkness, so I turned on the light. Even with the lights on, I thought my mother was holding up a pair of matching socks. If my father had worn those socks to church, no one would have noticed anyway because: 1. They looked like a matching pair of socks; 2. My father’s pants covered up his socks anyway; and 3. In our parish, no one went to church to check out other people’s socks.

By then, the sun was out and my mother took me out to the front porch along with my father. “See?” she said. “One sock is blue and one is black!” As I stared at the socks, I observed that one sock was indeed blue, a dark navy blue, that if you looked quickly, appeared black. And the other sock was black, but it had faded in the wash a little so it had a bluish tint to it. Overall, this looked like a matching pair of socks to me.

As I nervously examined the socks in my hands, my mother awaited my verdict. My father sent me signals through body language that I failed to correctly interpret. My father and I were both doomed. The well-being of my entire family rested on my decision. I felt sorry for my father because he could never dress for Sunday mass without experiencing my mother’s harsh criticism about his fashion sensibility. I could feel my mother glaring at me. I had to make a diplomatic decision. What to do? What to do?

Finally, I stated what I believed to be true of the socks even though I knew I would anger my mother. “This is a pair of socks,” I said. “Wait, Mom! Let me finish. The blue sock is so dark that it looks black and the black sock looks like it has a little blue in it.”

My mother exploded! “I told you to stay out of our arguments,” she yelled at me. Just then, she saw two girls from our parish walking to mass. She called them over to our front porch. “Is this a pair of socks?” she asked them. They both shook their heads. “See?” my mother said to my father and me. “One sock is blue, and the other is black,” one of the girls said. The other girl nodded in agreement. However, the girls couldn’t agree on which sock was the blue sock and which one was the black one, which infuriated my mother.

Well, we eventually went to church that Sunday, albeit a little late. And my father wore brown socks.

Social activism is more than just signing petitions, campaigning for the right candidate, or demonstrating in public against a social injustice. I may not campaign for the right candidate or demonstrate against a social injustice by marching on the streets, but I am trying to better the world in my own way, the best I can.

I believe that today’s youth need role models. When I was growing up, I had plenty of role models through school, my friends, and their families. However, none of them were Mexican. At our grade school, the nuns always talked about what it would be like when we went to college–not IF we went to college, but rather, when we went to college. I really wanted to go to college because of that positive influence.

Unfortunately, my mother was disappointed because I wanted to go to college. By the time I was in high school, she was divorced with six children, and she had hoped I would work full-time to help her financially. I wanted to go to college so I wouldn’t have to work in a factory as she did. “Why do you want to go to college?” she asked me. “So I don’t have to work in a factory,” I said.

She didn’t know what to say next. Finally, she said, “Mexicans don’t go to college!” “Yes, they do,” I said. “Well, show me one,” she said. I thought about all the Mexicans in the neighborhood that I knew or knew of, but not one was a college graduate, or even a college student.

Had there been at least one Mexican college student in the neighborhood, I might have persuaded my mother to let me go to college. But I lived in the Back of the Yards neighborhood that has always been more of a port of entry for immigrants who eventually moved on; once they established themselves in this country, they moved out of the neighborhood to someplace better, anyplace else. So Mexicans did go to college, but by then they had moved out of our neighborhood.

Now, I want to let everyone know that I am a college graduate. I feel that I am a positive influence on struggling students of all backgrounds, but especially Hispanic students. A few have told me so. I have had adults of Hispanic and descent congratulate me for my academic achievements. They tell me, “Show them that we’re not all a bunch of dummies!” And this is how I plan to be socially active. This is my way of making the world a better place.