Once, I saw my father wearing some very new dress pants. I was surprised to see him so dressed up. Then he asks me, “Guess how much I paid for these pants?” I really wasn’t sure how much they cost, but knowing my father, I knew he didn’t pay full price. I said, “Thirty dollars.” He said I was way too high. I kept lowering the price until I reached ten dollars and even then I was wrong, so I gave up. My father had the biggest smile on his face. “I only paid fifty cents!” How? He went to the Salvation Army! And just to prove it to me, he unbuckled his belt and showed me the price tag that was still stapled to the waistband.

I wavered for about two weeks. I’m so wishy-washy that I couldn’t make up my mind if I should go see Hamlet or not. Well, I decided, very firmly, to see Hamlet about fifteen minutes before the show started. I mean, the play was at the UIC Theater and I was on campus anyway.

Recently, I had watched a movie from Spain on the Internet and a young woman says that she’s an aspiring actress. Then, she starts performing Hamlet’s soliloquoy in Spanish: “Ser o no ser.” That helped me decide to see Hamlet. However, I almost didn’t get in because the show sold out moments after I bought my ticket. I’m really glad I saw the play because it was a very different inerpretation by director Luigi Salerni. (I took a playwriting class with him quite a few years ago while I was still a graduate student and I must admit that he taught me a lot about playwriting.)

So in his interpretation of the play, Hamlet kisses Horatio on the lips. I really wasn’t expecting this. When I think of Hamlet, I always think of the movie version with Lawrence Olivier. Of course, the play was updated a little to represent our times, but the dialogue was the original dialogue as Shakespeare wrote it. This combination reminded me of the movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes set in California, which I happen to love because of this incongruous combination. I love unexpected and unusual juxtapositions. I guess because my whole life is like that.

I’ve seen a few plays before at the UIC Theater and it’s a shame more people don’t know about it. Now that I have more time on my hands, I plan to see many more plays there. Next week, I plan to see Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Unless, of course, I change my mind.

When I was a boy, for as long as I could remember, my mother always cut my hair. She cut everyone’s hair in the family because it was cheaper than going to the barber.

The only reason I remembered this is because I was looking at some of our old family pictures and my brothers and I all had bad haircuts for every single class picture. The only one who had a good haircut was my father, but that’s because he used to cut his own hair. He wouldn’t let my mother cut his hair.

Anyway, my mother bought her own electric hair clipper with all the attachments and bragged about how it paid for itself after the first four haircuts. But my brothers and I were always unhappy with our haircuts. My sister lucked out because she got to grow her long since birth.

But for my brothers and I, my mother would make us sit in a kitchen chair and clip our hair. If we moved, she would pull an ear or pull our hair. If necessary, she would also pinch us or give us a coscorrón to the head. Corporal punishment was my mother’s most effective way of controlling us. However, the ultimate threat was, “If you keep moving, abuelita will cut your hair!” And we surely didn’t want that because abuelita was blind.

Occasionally, we had bald spots on our head from flinching because we anticipated our mother’s phantom pinch or coscorrón that never materialized. We dreaded whenever our hair reached our ears because we feared that impending haircut.

When I became an altar boy, Sister Eva said I could only serve mass if I went to a professional barber for a haircut. My mother was offended when I told her. But she gave in because she thought that if I was an altar boy, it would be easier for her to get to heaven.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. I married a Mexican beautician. So she always used to cut my hair. I liked the fact that I could get a haircut at home for free. When I started looking at the pictures from when I was married, I noticed that I always had a bad haircut. In fact, my wife had given me very many bad haircuts judging by all the pictures. And she was a professional, unlike my mother. But then I remembered how she was always the jealous type, so she probably cut my hair that way on purpose!

I haven’t had my haircut in six months now and I’ve been feeling kind of free. I feel my inner hippie coming out. I actually enjoy not getting haircuts! Especially when I think about all the bad haircuts and torture that I had to endure under my mother.

I plan on holding off on my next haircut for as long as possible. My tía Jovita in Mexico suggested to me that I let my hair grow. And so I haven’t had a haircut since then. I enjoy the stares I get when people see me with my full head of disheveled, graying hair!

North Avenue Beach has always been my favorite beach in Chicago. As a boy, I loved going there because of the beach and the swimming. Then, as I grew up a little, the field house that resembled a ship caught my attention. I loved riding my bike all around it. Finally, as a teenager, I disovered the Chess Pavilion. I rode my bike past it many times before, but I never noticed the chessboards embedded in the concrete there until I started playing chess in high school.

Usually, when we went to the beach, no one was playing chess anyway. The Chess Pavilion was made entirely of concrete with a concrete canopy where we went when it rained. Once I started playing chess, I would bring my chess set to the beach with me. When I was in high school, I rode my bike all the way from the south side to the Chess Pavilion several times just to play chess.

When I got my first car, I used to love driving up and down Lake Shore Drive just for the fun of it. My favorite part of LSD was near North Avenue Beach because I could see the Chess Pavilion as I drove by.

Once I was on a first date and I took her on my favorite drive up and down LSD. Finally, she asked to stop somewhere on the lakefront. I was sure she wanted to see the world famous Lake Michigan submarine races. Anyway, I immediately thought of going to the Chess Pavilion with her. Too bad that I didn’t have a chess set with me so I could test her intelligence as long as I was sizing her up as a prospective prospect.

So we park and we start walking. “Where are you taking me?” she asked. “I know the perfect place to watch the submarine races,” I said. We walked to the Chess Pavilion and sat on the chessboards. The night was clear but very cool and damp, however, we had a beautiful view of the Chicago skyline. After a while, she was cold from sitting on the concrete, so she sat on my lap. Well, I couldn’t have planned the evening any better!

My only regret in life is that I wasn’t born in Chicago. That’s right! I was born in a place far, far away from Chicago. Chicago is merely my adopted city. I love my fair city so much that I wonder how it is at all possible that I could have been born anywhere else. Mexicans place great importance on their place of birth, for obvious reasons. Many Mexicans proudly claim to have been born in Chicago regardless of the truth! However, whenever I meet other Mexicans, I feebly state, “I wasn’t born in Chicago.” Then, they say, “You were born in Mexico?” This is when I have to break the bad news to them: “I was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.” I always get the same look of disbelief from Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike. I mean, how many Mexicans do you know who have been born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey? I mean, other than me, how many? In fact, other than me, I never met another Mexican who was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. People often wonder why, so I tell them, “When my parents came to the United States, they took a wrong turn at the Rio Grande!” However, even though I was born in the USA, I was conceived in Mexico. I wanted my children to be not only American, but also born in Chicago. I remember having arguments with my wife about her choice of hospitals. I insisted that my sons would be born in Chicago. Luckily, I found a doctor that my wife liked and so my sons were born at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. Why was this so important to me? Well, I’ll tell you why. I really don’t know! I just thought it would be easier for my sons to say they were born in Chicago. And since I loved Chicago so much, this would be my way of giving a little something back to Chicago. Now whenever we drive on I-55 to the lakefront and we drive past Mercy Hospital, I tell them to wave to their hospital. This is always the highlight of our outing for me!