SON MIS LOCURAS

My mother and I take evening walks in my neighborhood.  As we walked one night last week, my mother looked toward a wooded area on our route and then announced, “un día me gustaría ver una de esas gallinas feroces.”  My response to her request to see a ferocious chicken must have been a very confused look, because she quickly clarified, “tu sabes, el tipo que dicen que se hechan a los leones.”

I looked at my mother, and then at the hillside, and then back at my mother.  “There are gallinas that attack lions?” I asked.

“Si,” she responded.  Still sensing my confusion she added, “tu sabes, las que salen en ese canal de los animales que te gusta.”

It was only after her reference to the Discovery Channel and my fascination with wild animal documentaries that I recognized she had mistaken the word “hyena” for “gallina.” 

And here I was hoping that an issue in my local city council race would be the ferocious chickens out to terrorize the neighborhood.

© Laura Genao 2007

While I am thankful for the academic opportunities I’ve been given, for several years now I’ve been most grateful for the comedic elements my educational experiences have provided. One from junior high school ranks among the best.

At Nimitz Junior High School in the early 80s there were about 3,000 students and 80 or so teachers. Among the students, the most memorable was L.P.; among the teachers, there was Mr. R.

L.P. was in all my honors classes in the sixth grade. Despite the classes we had in common, we never spoke until one afternoon when she cornered me near the bicycle racks and offered me red and blue pills out of a sandwich baggy. Because I “knew” that I couldn’t use drugs and go to college, much less show up at home, I declined with a smile and a shy “No, thank you.” She didn’t hold it against me and walked me part of the way home. From then on, L.P. became a sort of hero. She was the “big kid” who helped protect students in my honors classes from the bullies who were trying to beat us up for no reason other than our grades.

And so, as the pre-teen years rolled on, both L.P. and I worked at our strengths. Our talents brought us both some measure of success and notoriety. I got straight As and became student body president. She got her 5′ 10″ self kicked out of Nimitz in the seventh grade for fighting, only to go to Stevenson Middle School and earn straight As, meaning she could come back to Nimitz for one last year before high school.

That’s how we both ended up in Mr. R’s Honors Science class.

Mr. R was among the odder characters the faculty at Nimitz had to offer. His strangeness seemed rooted somewhere between the black leather pants he wore to class, the Harley-Davidson he rode to school, and his Baptist-preacher-at-a-revival manner of speech.

On good days, he let the students who earned As on their exams have the keys to the chemical closet, with no limit on what they put together. On bad days, he covered the clock with a giant sign reading, “Day Time,” so that students in our class couldn’t watch the passing of each of third period’s 54 minutes.

On really bad days, he filled out almost all the fields of an Official Unsatisfactory Note and proclaimed that “Failure to pay attention in class” was the deficiency that warranted sending the note home to a parent. He left only the “Student Name” field blank and then turned to face the class and begin his version of Unsatisfactory Note Musical Chairs.

“Mr. Say-ha, what is the chemical symbol for Carbon?” he asked Mr. Ceja. “Ms. May-nah where is gold on the periodic chart?” he barked at Ms. Mena.

When a student provided the wrong answer to one of Mr. R’s questions, he moved the Official Unsatisfactory Note to that student’s desk. It remained on that desk until another student provided a wrong answer. Whichever student had the note sitting on his desk at the end of the hour had the honor of getting his name filled into the “Student Name” field.

On one bad, but not especially bad day, Mr. R noticed that L.P. was talking to the boy sitting in front of her and that this distraction caused the boy to turn his head away from Mr. R.

“Mr. Pay-raise, don’t you talk to that devil back there,” Mr. R said.

The room full of 13-year-olds giggled. Mr. Perez blushed and then turned around and faced the chalkboard. Minutes later, a slow murmur could be heard in the back of the room and Mr. Perez could be seen turning around to respond.

Again, came Mr. R’s booming voice, “Mr. Pay-raise, I told you not to talk to that devil back there.”

This time, the response was not the sound of giggling or Mr. Perez’s chair turning to face forward. Instead, all eyes became fixated on the sight of L.P. unfolding herself from her chair, arms raised and yelling, “I am the devil!!!”

The preacher in Mr. R retorted with a raised hand and “Satan, I cast thee hence!”

“AAAAhhhhhhhh!!” came L.P.’s response, before she ran out of the room.

Mr. R chased her down the hall.

The class gathered at the doorway watching.

Mr. R’s boot heel broke off and he stumbled part way down the hall. L.P. kept running and got away.

Minutes later the bell rang and the rest of us ran away, too. When we returned to Mr. R’s class the next day, it was apparent that L.P. was gone. We all sat quietly, too scared to say anything.

As we adjusted to the awkwardness of returning to a classroom that had been the scene of a horrible and traumatizing scene, we noticed that the “Day Time” sign over the clock had been replaced with a new one reading, “Not Yet.”

When a few of us made eye contact with Mr. R, he glanced at the sign, then at us, and he laughed and laughed and laughed. “L.P. might be gone,” he seemed to say, “but lunacy is not.”

For some strange reason, on that particular day, at that point in the universe, we all found his laughter comforting and maybe that’s what has allowed the whole scene to get filed into the “Comedies” section of our collective memories.

© Laura Genao 2007