A Childhood Toy

I grew up in the advent of battery-powered toys. This meant that any trip to Toys-R-Us bombarded me with electronic dolls, glowing keyboards and most of all, loud everythings. But my favorite toy belonged in the office of one of my dad's coworkers. I'll be honest, I was an adorable kid. So when I saw the wooden train set that rested on his desk, I asked to borrow it. He told me that not only could I borrow it, but that it needed decoration and I was just the girl to do it. Unfortunately for the train, the only markers he had were plum, dark green and red. By the time my work was complete, the train looked like it had been in a train wreck. Plum, dark green and red are just not colors conducive to designing a pretty train.

That train connected to three different cars and I had the best time filling the cargo part with everything I could find. For Valentine's Day, I put a bunch of Hershey Kisses in the car and ran the train down the hall to everyone's office.

Sometimes, one of the wheels would get stuck up with carpet. This would result in an emergency trip to the train doctor (the secretary) who would use a letter opener to dig it out. After thanking her, the train was on its way.

Carmina

My car was a piece of shit.

Those were the first and last words I had for my silver '97 Pontiac Grand Pris. The first time was when I slipped behind the wheel of the car on a hot summer's day and realized that the air conditioning was no better than a small child blowing air into your face. Smelly air, at that. The last time was when the car took its final shuddering breaths outside my house, limping home after having died in the middle of an intersection.

But she was mine and served me faithfully for almost two years. Though it took two bottles of Febreze to remove my step-brother's body funk from the car, once I thoroughly cleaned it, she was quite passable inside and out.

She had a habit of sticking the transmission and the radio went out after the first six months, followed shortly by all four windows, of which only the driver's could be saved. If my car had gone underwater and I had a passenger, you were on your own.

Her paint was a silver with a hint of bullshit, like she was trying to pull a fast one on you and say she was actually a modern car. But I loved her and I loved her broken windows and the rearview mirror that fell off every time I hit a bump or a curb. The heating was good and overall, the car looked nice.

That was until Eric Grunes found my car with the fender of his car. It was not the best of introductions.

I had pulled up behind him in a parking spot after waiting for him to adjust his wheels. I was behind a good fifteen seconds when he put it in reverse and backed into me at full speed. After making him cry for a good ten minutes, I got his insurance information and we settled outside of the police. $600 didn't quite make up for the damage in my door that my dad could only just press out or the "HOLY SHIT" moment when my car was hit, but seeing a driver who had been behind the wheel for two weeks crumple under my fists of verbose abuse was somehow satisfying. It turned the mark on her door into a battle scar.

Tree-climbing

Down the street from my house, there is a tree that stands like a many-armed man reaching for the stars. The base of the tree is thick, the branches sturdy and about halfway up is the perfect cubbyhole for a middle-school girl to sit while she waits for the morning bus. If I got there early enough, I could ascend to my throne and be the first to spot the bus as it veered around the corner.

At the rental house we lived in after my dad left, there was a crabapple tree in the backyard. Knowing as I did that apples were good and crabs were expensive, I thought we were sitting on a gold mine, so I picked the apples and put them in the fridge. When my mother asked why there was crap in the fridge, I slowly explained that we would put them on the apple market and get some extra money. My mother dumped them in the backyard to rot. She did not agree.

That tree had a strong base, but weak branches. Although every mother fears her child will come tumbling down the branches and land, inevitably, on an arm or a face, I never fell. That tree became my hiding spot and though I know now that I was probably no more than five feet off the ground, it was a second home. Before we moved away, I placed some little gold metal stars in the center of the tree where all the branches met. As far as I know, they are still there.

Fascination

When I was young, nothing fascinated me more than the sparkles of dust that swirled beneath the place where my air conditioning vent and window intersected. At the time, the realization that "eww, that's what I'm really breathing?" didn't hit. I was mesmerized by the path the dust took. It would fall from the ceiling, slowly tracing its way down the sunlight staircase until it neared the edge of the sunlight, but it never fell further. Here the vent would take hold. The air would grab the dust and throw it back toward the ceiling and the cycle began again.

Once, a big dark moth found its way into my room. It was a hot summer night, but I turned off my fan so it would land. The lamp next to my bed was on and it created a new intersection for the dust and light. For a moment, everything was still and I heard nothing but the high-pitched hum of my lamp. Holding my breath, I heard the soft thuwmp-thuwmp of the moth's wings as it wove its way toward the siren song of the light. As it passed under the lamplight, I saw a fresh shimmer of dust from its wings rise into the air and mix with the swirling particles of light that sparkled like stars against my ceiling.

My Dog Rusty

My dog Rusty is insane. And a thief. A thieving, insane ninja dog that has a habit of sneaking his 90 pound body over mine during the night, so that when I wake up, his elbow is right on my bladder.

I got him for my 12th birthday and if I had been more observant, it would have been the worst-kept surprise ever. But I sat with my eyes closed at my party and my dad dropped a fluffy, wriggling ball into my lap and my life has never been the same. Unlike most golden retrievers at that age, he was a very dark red. Our eyes met and we laughed. I knew it was love at first sight.

Then he peed on the floor.

He proved to be a very smart dog. Within a week, I had him following me around, sitting, staying, shaking and speaking in four different barks, each of which projected a varying degree of excitement.

He gets the name Ninja Dog from his innate ability to steal anything from your hands. By the time you notice it, he is already scooting away on his belly to a corner to devour his prize. I usually double knot my shoelaces, but for some reason, I did not on this day. As I sat and watched TV, I noticed that Rusty had shuffled over next to me and had pressed right up against me with his head on my feet. Sure that this was no more than the love of a loyal companion, I let him stay where he was.

When Rusty is frustrated, he lets out a long hiss of air from his nose and this proved to be his giveaway. I shooed him away from my feet, where he had been for the last five minutes. My shoelaces were now untied and he was in the process of removing them completely from the shoe. He probably would have succeeded too, but one of the laces got caught and made a knot.

Another time, I had a bit of food in my fingers. I didn't notice Rusty slip behind the couch and it wasn't until I felt a gentle tug did I see dark red eyes peering up at me. Too surprised to say anything to him, I watched as he closed his lips around the bit of chicken and slowly pulled. The meat slipped from my fingers and still meeting my eyes with a guiltless smile, he backed into the kitchen.

Sixth Meeting

During this meeting, we went down into the children's book area to pick out some books for her to read. We settled on an old favorite of mine: Louis Sacher's Wayside School series. She read the first three chapters and we stopped every couple of paragraphs to make sure she understood the story. One chapter was about a teacher that turned every one of her students into apples. Josefina showed a good understanding for humor because she laughed every time one of the students made a joke and showed disbelief when the students were turned into apples. It seemed she really enjoyed the chapters and understood the series very well. She said her daughters have some old baby books at home both in English and Spanish, but they are very easy. This book was a better fit for her because the dialogue was complex, but the story was simple, so it was good practice. After reading a chapter, I had her pick out five past, present and future tense verbs and use them in a sentence. This turned out to be our last lesson.

Fifth Meeting

Our fifth meeting was a speaking lesson where we tried to combine everything she had learned so far into one lesson. We talked about her family, her weekend plans, her likes and dislikes and her future plans. She told me about how she and her husband turned their garage into a room for their daughter. Josefina talks a lot about her kids. She wants them to learn more about computers and she would like them to take piano lessons at some point. We discovered that we both love cooking and spent a good ten minutes trying to translate some her recipes into English. She never showed any desire to really travel because most of her family is here. She doesn't really watch TV and has recently picked up another job as a maid for a family in Fort Worth during the day. I had a feeling that with this hiring, our meetings might taper off some since she is now working nights and mornings.

Fourth Meeting

When Josefina and I met, she was having trouble with the past tense, especially in tricky words without an -ed ending. We spent this lesson working on past tense. I gave her a list of verbs in infinitive form and she conjugated them into past, present and future tense. I then had her read the words to work on pronunciation. Her homework that week was to come up with six verbs, with at least three being tricky ending words, and conjugate them. Once the switch in words was explained, she picked up on it very quickly. One example was the phrase 'to bring.' When she conjugated it, she wrote future: will bring, present: bringing, past: bringed. I had her pronounce it and while she could tell it wasn't correct, she didn't know how to change it. Once we fixed it, I made her a list of all the complicated words that I could think of and told her to use them in a sentence. We then worked on sentences that contained all three tenses with different verbs. By the end of the lesson, she was comfortably switching between past and present tense.

Third Meeting

My third meeting with Josefina was very productive. She had completed her homework and demonstrated a very good grip on past tense. We talked for about ten minutes about her family and things she liked. I noticed she was having trouble connecting sentences with emotion words, so I wrote her a chart that listed the major emotions in speech from hate to love. We drilled sentences about food, saying things like "I like this food and I love this food." By the end of the lesson, she was fluently comparing emotions in a grammatically correct way. We also had a long conversation about foods and discovered we both enjoy cooking. At the end of the lesson, we agreed to keep meeting after the semester is over so that I can help her and her father with English.

Second Meeting

When Josefina and I met for the second time, all of the computers in the library were full, so we decided to work on grammar. After a short conversation where I asked her different questions to see where she was experiencing the most difficulty, we decided to focus the lesson on past tense. We worked on conjugating verbs and pointing out trouble-spots in the English language. Josefina is very good about correcting her mistakes and once I pointed out a spelling or usage error, she did not repeat it for the rest of the lesson. I assigned her some homework at the end of the lesson and we agreed to meet again next week.

Judgment

I find it extremely amusing that my post about my first meeting was judged as pessimistic. I'm a realist. I don't expect to have the motivational movie moment, where the string chorus is swelling and the tears are rising to the eyes of everyone watching. But I am going to do my best and anyone who suggests otherwise can shove it.

First Meeting

My first meeting with Josefina was unremarkable and slapdash. As both of us were slightly unprepared for the encounter, any resemblance and homage to structure was replaced with a more anticipatory eagerness for it to end. Our scatterbrained lesson involved the basics of computer use, though advancement through use of e-mail was impossible as she did not have her passwords with her. I myself am a frustrated mentor. Having been raised with computers, I could not begin to comprehend the slowness of her typing or the halting strokes of the mouse. Restraint, bred through years of conflict resolution, kept my hand from the mouse and my tongue in my head. I am unlike those who see this as a learning experience. I do not hope to gain a friend or student and while my best efforts will be applied, I see no greatness evolving from our second or third or tenth meeting. I only look to improve a little each time.

The Street I Grew Up On

The street was wider when I was young, but as I stand at the end now, it is only one and a half cars wide, creating tiny battles that are fought every time two cars come head to head. Twenty years ago, someone thought Bradford Oear trees would be a great idea. Today, the foundations of each house groan their complaints as they shift uncomfortably above the probing roots. The yards are small and the dogs are big, but it balances out because if you don't have a dog, a neighbor will happily oblige you and give you the full experience of pet ownership regardless of your desire to have a clean lawn devoid of fecal matter. The mailboxes are strong steel cubicles with peeling paint that reads US MAIL. The one by my house has been tapped, hit, egged and otherwise abused, but it stood tall until my neighbor's ex-wife ran over it while she was high on meth. Otherwise, it's a clean neighborhood. One of my neighbors had a peach tree planted right next to his fence. I thought he was asking for it. I used to Rollerblade through the back alley as a child and circle and reach for the glistening peaches hanging just out of arms reach. As they ripened, the branch drooped and the tantalizing fruit was mine. It was the only fruit I ate from that tree because it had a worm in it. After that, I only bothered the crabgrass.