As I was reading the Chicago Sunday Tribune today, I had many repetitive, random, redundant, and recurring thoughts. First, I started subscribing to the Trib again after a six-month hiatus. They promised me a better delivery service this time. I shall see just how good the delivery is this time.

When I previously subscribed, I hated not getting the newspaper delivered when I was supposed to get it. So, I would buy the paper somewhere on my way to school, and when I returned home, it was finally delivered. Sometimes they didn’t deliver it at all. The only time I received the paper every single day, even the days that I wasn’t supposed to get it, was when I asked for a vacation hold!

Today, I remembered why I liked the delivery. The Sunday newspaper! It’s like receiving a present that I enjoy unwrapping. I genuinely enjoy lazing around the house all morning and afternoon reading as much of the paper as possible and doing crossword puzzles.

As I was looking through the sales, I stopped every time I saw a lingerie or bikini ad. These ads have always captivated me in a way that I’m sure is not natural. Yes, I caught myself staring a few times. There is something very appealing to me about these female models and I don’t know how to explain it.

Well, this led me to recall the time I was in the Marines in California. I was stationed in 29 Palms in the middle of the Mohave Desert, and I met a certain Patrick Connelly who was the oldest Marine I had met up to that time. I was surprised because at 22 years old I was the oldest Marine I knew until I met Pat. He was at the unbelievable age of twenty-seven because few people would want to endure Marine Corps boot camp at that age, but Pat did.

He had previously been in the Army and the Air Force, and he thought he would give the Marine Corps a try. He had grown up in southern California so he always recommended places that we should visit in order that we could say that we really had experienced California. I really did get to see all sides of California because of Pat.

He once recommended that we go to The Body Shop. To me a body shop was a place where you took your car after an accident. “No!” Pat corrected me. “The Body Shop is a very famous California destination for tourists.” I had no idea what he was talking about until he explained that it was a strip club in Los Angeles. I had never been to a strip club, so I still had no idea what he was talking about.

Well, since I wanted to see as many tourist attractions as possible, I tagged along. Actually, I drove us there. I was the only one with a car and they would pay for the gas. Because I had an out-of-state plate, I could buy gas on any day instead of waiting for the appropriate odd or even day according to my license plate.

All the guys were excited all the way to L.A. because we were going to The Body Shop, especially Pat. I just didn’t get it. I really didn’t. We got there and I asked for a beer. Only they didn’t serve beer. I thought it would be like a comedy club where you pay a cover charge and then must buy a two-drink minimum. In fact, they didn’t serve anything at all. They had a pop machine in the foyer if we got thirsty. There was a state law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages in strip joints.

I didn’t get it. In real life, usually the alcohol flows and then the clothes come off, naturally. All my friends were whooping it up in anticipation of seeing the strippers while they bought their pop. It cost about three times the normal price. I didn’t buy a pop. I really wasn’t thirsty right then and I wasn’t planning on cheering on the strippers, so I really wouldn’t have to wet my whistle later on.

The place was packed, but we found some seats. I sat on a stool with my back up against the wall. Pat was the happiest of all. He kept smiling at us and asking us if we were having a good time. He asked me several times if I liked the place. I was actually glad that I had gone, but when I’m in public, I look the same whether I’m having a good time or I’m bored.

The strippers came out, one at a time, and stripped to the loud cheers of  the audience, mostly men. As I watched the show, I leaned back against the wall. And I fell asleep! That is, until Pat gave me an elbow to my side and asked, “Isn’t she a great dancer?” I said yes, she was, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I really didn’t understand how all these men could get so into the show.

Maybe that’s because I’m different. I need to be emotionlally involved in order to receive the full benefit of such a performance. I faked it as best as I could and I think I managed to pull it off because my friends were so excited that they really didn’t pay much attention to me.

As I looked at the lingerie ads today, I realized that the lingerie and bikini models are more attractive than those strippers we saw at The Body Shop. Perhaps, that why I couldn’t get into them.

When my brother Joe got married, he had a bachelor’s party. His future brother-in-law called me up several times to make sure that I was going. This was an unusual bachelor’s party considering that the brother of his bride-to-be arranged all the festivities. The future brother-in-law with his long blond hair looked the wrestler Triple H. But he insisted that he wasn’t as tough and as muschular so we called him Double H.

We met at a comedy club and Double H made sure that the emcee knew it was my brother’s bachelor’s party. Of course, the emcee then proceeded to roast my brother.

We enjoyed the comedy show and I thought the fun was over for the evening. But Double H said that we had to car pool to our next destination. He was very secretive about it. He even had designated drivers. I had no idea where we were going, but I got into the car that Double H pointed to. Well, about an hour later, we’re at a strip club. Double H paid for everyone’s cover and we were inside.

At least this place served beer. Double H was so proud of himself for getting everyone to the strip club. He told the club manager that this was my brother’s bachelor’s party, so they brought him up on stage and tied him up on chair. Then all the strippers started to give my brother lap dances. Oh, the look of pride on Double H’s face was just too much! Every time I see Double H at family parties, I thank him for that bachelor’s party. And brother Joe is still married!

Anyway, this also reminded me of one of my former students who was always tired during class. She always apologized for being tired during class, but she didn’t tell me why she was up all night. I never asked because she was an A student. She always studied and did all her homework. Towards the end of the semester a few students recommended that we take a class field trip. They insisted that we go to a place that served alcohol since they were all twenty-one or had fake IDs.

Since I am a Spanish professor, I insisted on a Mexican restaurant where we could eat Mexican food and drink Margaritas. Well, we had fun and everyone revealed a few personal details about themselves, including me. But we all had fun and said that we had to do it again real soon.

Well, the student who was always tired in my class and I were the last two of our bunch to leave because we wanted to finish our last Margarita. We talked awhile and she told me a little about herself. The reason she was always up very late at night was because she was a stripper at a gentlemen’s club. She was doing it because the money was good. She was paying for her tuition and she had no student loans to pay off upon graduation. She also bought her own condo with a 50% down payment. We had an interesting coversation, but I didn’t judge her because of her employment. How did she look? Well, she was attractive, but I don’t think she was beautiful enough to be a lingerie or bikini model.

However, I’m sure she compensated for her deficiency with her dancing skills. And here is a very telling note about our capitalistic society and how much we value different consumer services. She earned much more money as a stripper than I earned as a college professor!

When I was growing up, I never had my own bedroom. I always had to share my room with at least one brother. I remember the bedroom we had on Wood Street. We had two sets of bunkbeds for the four of us. I always liked sleeping on the top bunk just to be away from everyone, even if it was only temporarily. Sometimes it was the only privacy I had.

When my parents started to really argue right before getting divorced, my mother moved her bedroom to the attic and gave me her bedroom all to myself. I felt bad because then my father didn’t have a bedroom, but he wanted me to have the bedroom for myself. He told me that he didn’t need a bedroom. My father worked the midnight shift, and he would sleep on the sofa while we were at school. He was upset that his marriage was breaking up.

Well, this new bedroom of mine was the first time I ever had my own bedroom, and I just loved the privacy! The doors even had a working lock because my mother had put it there to keep my brothers and me out. So, I used to lock my bedroom whenever I went to school. That was my very own private kingdom. I would always find things right where I left them! My brother Danny couldn’t borrow my hockey shin guards without my permission. Dicky couldn’t sell my stuff when I wasn’t home. Tato was the only one I could trust because we did many things together ever since he started helping me with my paper route. We were business associates. I also had a chameleon in my room that liked to hang on the red drapes and blend in.

When I went away to Divine Heart Seminary my freshman year, I lost my private bedroom. My father had moved out of our house on Wood Street due to their separation and pending divorce.

When I returned from Divine Heart a year and a half later, my new bedroom was in the attic, which was unfinished, unheated, unfurnished, and had no running water. The bedroom that my mother had for herself in the attic was very livable, but it was off limits to me. That was my mother’s emergency bedroom. Just in case. Just in case of what, I never did learn.

My father would only return to the house to take us out for a visitation. So, I was relegated to the rear of the drafty attic. My mother had found a stowaway bed in the alley, and she came to get me so I could help her put it in the attic. At first, I didn’t know why she called me. When we were in the alley, she said that we were putting the bed in the back of her VW Squareback. I had seen a dog urinating on it early in the day and I told my mother so. She told me to just help her take it home because that was going to be my bed in the attic.

Well, ever the optimist, I was happy to have my very own room again. I stuffed newspaper into the cracks between the roof and the wall to stop the wind from coming in during the winter. My mother and I installed a gas space heater to make the attic bearable during the winter, but it was still cold anyway. Luckily, I had been in the Explorers Club where I learned how to camp during winter weather. I used to sleep in my mummy sleeping bag with two wool blankets. I was quite comfortable even on the coldest nights.

I used my guitar amplifier to create surround sound in the attic by hooking up every speaker I ever found to my radio and 8-track player. I set up a little table with a manual typewriter and I used to type away for hours. And the final touch was my favorite. I bought a black light and some flourescent posters of M.C. Escher drawings that were so popular in the 1960s and 1970s. I always kept the black light on as a night light. Otherwise, I would crash into the roof beams and bang my head so hard that I would have large lumps. (That’s why I’m so hard-headed to this day.) And just when I had my bedroomm exactly as I wanted it, my parents’s divorce was final and my mother bought a new house in Marquette Park and we had to move.

When I think of all the bedrooms that I have ever had, my favorite one had to be the one at the house on Marquette Road. I went from one extreme to the other. From a cold drafty bedroom in the attic to a bedroom in the basement next to the boiler.

I actually started sleeping in my birthday suit for the first time in my life because the bedroom was so hot. This bedroom wasn’t actually just mine and mine alone, but rather a room I shared with Danny, Tato, and Dicky. But as they went off to Divine Heart Seminary one by one, the room became mine alone while they were away at school. But before they left, we painted the room completely black. We also painted the windows black, so the bedroom was completely dark. However, I brought the black light from my previous bedroom and put it up, along with the flourescent M.C. Escher posters that I had. My brothers bought more flourescent posters that practically lit up the whole room.

That room was perfect for sleeping! In fact, I couldn’t tell when the sun rose because the room was so dark. The only thing I really hated about the room was the concrete floor that wasn’t level. It looked deceivingly level, but if you put a ball on the floor it would immediately start rolling. The dressers were practically useless in that vortex of a bedroom because of the uneven floors. The drawers wouldn’t open or close properly because the dresser would become misshapen because of the floor. When the basement became very humid, the drawers would just freeze in whatever position they were in.

But as I said, the room was perfect for sleeping because it was so dark. The black light was perpetually on. It was the perfect mood lighting. All the posters were very comforting. I even got used to waking up in the middle of the night and looking at the one of the Satan-like creature with pterodactyl-like wings flying off with a baby in its talons into the flourescent orange sky. One of my brothers bought that poster.

My mother no longer used her portable AM/FM/8-Track player, so I used it for mood music while I slept. I especially loved the 8-Track player. Sure the sound quality didn’t compare to other stereos, but it had the distinct advantage of being able to play good music over and over and over again.

The most annoying part was when the looped tape would reach the beginning/end marked by a slilver strip that would change tracks. It would make a sound similar to the clack-clack-clack of a roller coaster as it ascends the first hill. Only it was duller and it sounded like wood thumping on wood.

I remember listening to these 8-Tracks repeatedly through high school: Led Zeppelin III, Black Sabbath Paranoid, Yes Fragile, Deep Purple Machine Head, and Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy. And when they wore out and broke from being over played, I would buy a new copy of to replace the faulty 8-Track. Amazingly, the 8-Track player never broke!

When I taught Spanish at Richard J. Daley College on the south side, the department sure made me earn my money. They got more than their money’s worth from me if you ask me. The ideal size for a Spanish class should be somewhere around fifteen students, but less would be even better. At Daley College, my small class had twenty-five students and my large class had forty-five. I was constantly correcting homework, quizzes, and exams. When I have such a large enrollment, I usually don’t notice individual students unless they are performing extremely well or extremely poorly.

One day, Lois came into my office during office hours. I was surprised since students do not normally visit me during office hours. I would like to attribute this to the fact that I’m a great Spanish teacher, but the sad reality is that students who really need my help are either too busy or too lazy to visit me for help. I knew of Lois that semester because she had failed every quiz thus far. At least she came to me for help early in the semester. She was an African-American single mother. As I soon found out, she was also on welfare, but the state required her to take classes or lose her welfare benefits. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be in college.

She said she was really trying, but I didn’t believe her. She said Spanish was too hard for her.  She had not completed even one homework assignment. She gave me a lot reasons for her poor performance, but I told her that those were just excuses. She told me that she had no time to do her homework. “What’s the next item on your agenda?” I asked her. Well, she had to pick up her children from school in two hours. I told her to sit down and start doing her homework. If she had any problems, I would answer her questions.

Slowly but surely, she finished her first homework assignment. Sure, I had to help her, but she caught on rather quickly. She didn’t think she was smart enough to do the homework. She came to my office a few more times to do her homework and soon she was doing all the homework without my help. She started passing the quizzes and eventually earned a B- for final grade of the course. I was quite proud of her. She was only defeating herself until I showed her that she had the capacity to do college work. I’m sure she eventually graduated from college because she was so determined after that semester.