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ESL was a misnomer for us, I suppose. January of 1977. 12 years old. I was quickly ushered into ESL classes to fill my days when I first arrived at the nearest junior high school of our new neighborhood in Los Angeles (see Wk 22). My brother and I were truly “fresh off the plane.” We were ESL, as people used to refer to it – not as it probably should have been more accurate to maybe say, “taking ESL classes.” Saying someone was ESL neatly packaged him or her with a big, fat label, where people’s preconceptions of that status could then file them away in their minds. ESL students were a little invisible at times, which was, luckily, just fine.
Our reality, however, is that my brother and I were ETL. English was really our third language. From age 4 and 5, we had grown up in a world of German full immersion at our Swiss school in Lima. There is a lot for which to thank German. When we arrived in the United States, in full migratory disorientation and with only a couple of English words in hand (including my favorite: Window! Because the W sound was so exotic and foreign to me), our training in German gave us a definite edge. There was the knowing how to learn a foreign language that was in our favor, but also the shared nuts and bolts of German and English. Some days were good, if I could remember to suppress my urge to spell all English “sh” sounding words with the obligatory German s-c-h, or when I could remember to write House instead of Haus. We used to say that if we could not figure out a word with our Spanish – and its ladlefuls of useful Greek and Latin, we could break down its meaning using our German. It mostly worked. Sometimes. It still kid-sucked to be lost in a sea of words that would float around your ears without allowing themselves to be captured and deciphered.
And sometimes we were not so invisible. There was definitely a fresh meat/new person to taunt thing going on in junior high. I guess that is no big revelation to any of you, nor to the film industry, which has churned out dozens of teen angst movies that have made someone somewhere sweat anew again.
I was sitting in 7th grade science class trying to pay attention – paying attention doubly because of the new collision of science terminology and English mixing into one. I remember thinking in those days that I would give myself headaches trying to concentrate with all the molecules and muscles available to me. I only knew how to try hard in school. It was my mom’s way. It was my family’s way. And I now had to try hard in a language I did not command.
I sat at my wide, plastic laminate covered desk facing Mrs. Sinclair, our really smart and really nurturing science teacher. In a second I felt a hard snap at the center of my back and my brain fritzed. That nanosecond where you try to gather the data and circumstances to find out what just happened, but your brain keeps rejecting your answers.
Let’s stop ourselves right here from using real names. Real names are reserved for the good and not for the bad. Let’s just call this kid Dirk, or Karl, but we will definitely try to avoid the urge to alias him as Dick.
A hard snap! And then one instant later, I registered what my brain already knew. This little shit had gone over my white cotton shirt and snapped my bra strap open. I let out a loud, breathless shriek and ran out of the classroom in tears. I rushed to the girls’ bathroom across the hallway and cried, adjusted with trembling fingers, and cried some more.
I don’t remember how I managed to go back to that classroom. I do remember fearing that maybe my classmates would think I had overreacted. There was a lot of second-guessing of teen cultural and societal levels of freak out in those days. It was OK to freak out if you forgot your favorite sweater in the recently locked up gym, but it was not OK to freak out if you walked into a dense cloud of pot smoke in the back of the girls’ locker room. This was our new L.A. existence. Maybe bra tricks were commonplace there, but to me, it felt wrong.
I was lucky to have Mrs. Sinclair. She leveled me out. She took me back to my seat, doing that thing that nice grown ups do where they enfold you with their presence, shielding you with their torso as they usher you back to a safe place. I don’t know how much trouble Dirk/Karl/Dick got into, because he was gone when I returned to my seat. There was an apology later, but all I could think while he was fidgetily spouting it was, “I just want you not to be in front of my face.”
Sometimes the ESL invisibility cloak would fall because of my own doing. There was absolutely no reason to pass by the scary Cholo guy that had been busted for tagging the wall near the school’s administration building and poke fun at him. He had been caught spraying graffiti gang names on the beige expanse; we all had heard about it. By late afternoon, he was out there, ordered to cover up his tag with brush and paint bucket. I remember thinking, “dumbass” – problem was, my editorial materialized into an audible chuckle. I think even in my compromised, new immigrant state, I was still myself and I was still a smarty-pants.
I kept walking just a few steps and then…chase! I could hear his shoes on the paving, and barely looking back, started to run. Cholo guy was at my heels, with a drenched brush of paint flailing in his right hand. Lucky for me, he was big, but I was faster. Still. Do not try this at home.
About 5 weeks into the semester, my ESL teacher, Mrs. Kirchner announced to our classroom full of mostly Latino and Korean kids that we would be learning a dance. Of all odd mixtures, Mrs. Kirchner, a Hungarian, and her husband were way into…drum roll, please…square dancing. She had to explain to us what square dancing was and through the weeks she paired us and really taught us the choreography carefully. In a couple of lessons we would be deep in do-si-dos and John Denver. To this day, it is comical to me that I know all the words to… “Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong…” and that the term Mountain Mamma warms my heart.
As time went on, she revealed to us her true intention. We were going to be performing in the middle of an upcoming all-school celebration. We were mortified. So there we were. We were other, being taught a strange dance that screamed other in mid Los Angeles, California, by someone that was certainly other. Other, trice baked. That certainly went against the ESL invisibility clause.
But there was something in her innocence.
There was such joy in her face when she would bring the box full of petticoats from home to show us and to have the girls in class try on before the performance. And to be honest, that was the most glamorous part of square dancing. The reds, and the fuchsias, and the chartreuse tulles – mountains of them overflowing from the box – all trimmed in lace or satin edges that echoed, in a darker or lighter hue, the skirts’ main colors. This was a fashion party and a half! The feel of my fingers diving into the rough and beautiful rainbow of meshes made the idea of performing in front of the student body suddenly less worrisome.
But not so smooth sailing just yet.
People were always telling my mother where to go shopping for performance outfit parts for me at normal shops with normal girl sizes. The problem was I had a size 10 foot and was a lanky 5ft-9, even at age 12. There was the time in Lima with the black leotard that was meant for girls my age but which kept doing that slide-y thing because it was way too short for my legs, giving me that Penguin crotch look. Lovely. This time for the added curve thrown at us, Mrs. Kirchner had told my mom to get me Chinese black slippers from L.A. Chinatown. We tried to find something but the largest size barely fit me – my toes were sentenced to either stay impossibly squished at the front of the shoe, or my heels would have to oblige by being left out of the shoe altogether.
So, once the day of the performance came, I got out there with my ill-fitting Chinese slippers half way on, and danced the best I could, remembering all the steps while trying not to fling my half-way-on shoes off in all the motion. Round and round, don’t fall off. Do-si-do, don’t fall off.
We, all the ESLians, got through it. I got through it.
I wonder for how many decades that trial by square dance has saved me in moments when I needed the extra self-assurance of knowing I could get through anything. And I guess, I can thank those stupid, tiny shoes, which kept me so preoccupied with their discomfort, that the social death of square dancing in front of the tough audience of teens went almost unperceived. But mostly, I have Mrs. Kirchner to thank. There is something infectious about resolve. Even when an idea might seem misguided, it is good to have someone at the helm that truly believes it is grand.
Country Roads – performed by John Denver, written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZBQjTF_Hpk
Our reality, however, is that my brother and I were ETL. English was really our third language. From age 4 and 5, we had grown up in a world of German full immersion at our Swiss school in Lima. There is a lot for which to thank German. When we arrived in the United States, in full migratory disorientation and with only a couple of English words in hand (including my favorite: Window! Because the W sound was so exotic and foreign to me), our training in German gave us a definite edge. There was the knowing how to learn a foreign language that was in our favor, but also the shared nuts and bolts of German and English. Some days were good, if I could remember to suppress my urge to spell all English “sh” sounding words with the obligatory German s-c-h, or when I could remember to write House instead of Haus. We used to say that if we could not figure out a word with our Spanish – and its ladlefuls of useful Greek and Latin, we could break down its meaning using our German. It mostly worked. Sometimes. It still kid-sucked to be lost in a sea of words that would float around your ears without allowing themselves to be captured and deciphered.
And sometimes we were not so invisible. There was definitely a fresh meat/new person to taunt thing going on in junior high. I guess that is no big revelation to any of you, nor to the film industry, which has churned out dozens of teen angst movies that have made someone somewhere sweat anew again.
I was sitting in 7th grade science class trying to pay attention – paying attention doubly because of the new collision of science terminology and English mixing into one. I remember thinking in those days that I would give myself headaches trying to concentrate with all the molecules and muscles available to me. I only knew how to try hard in school. It was my mom’s way. It was my family’s way. And I now had to try hard in a language I did not command.
I sat at my wide, plastic laminate covered desk facing Mrs. Sinclair, our really smart and really nurturing science teacher. In a second I felt a hard snap at the center of my back and my brain fritzed. That nanosecond where you try to gather the data and circumstances to find out what just happened, but your brain keeps rejecting your answers.
Let’s stop ourselves right here from using real names. Real names are reserved for the good and not for the bad. Let’s just call this kid Dirk, or Karl, but we will definitely try to avoid the urge to alias him as Dick.
A hard snap! And then one instant later, I registered what my brain already knew. This little shit had gone over my white cotton shirt and snapped my bra strap open. I let out a loud, breathless shriek and ran out of the classroom in tears. I rushed to the girls’ bathroom across the hallway and cried, adjusted with trembling fingers, and cried some more.
I don’t remember how I managed to go back to that classroom. I do remember fearing that maybe my classmates would think I had overreacted. There was a lot of second-guessing of teen cultural and societal levels of freak out in those days. It was OK to freak out if you forgot your favorite sweater in the recently locked up gym, but it was not OK to freak out if you walked into a dense cloud of pot smoke in the back of the girls’ locker room. This was our new L.A. existence. Maybe bra tricks were commonplace there, but to me, it felt wrong.
I was lucky to have Mrs. Sinclair. She leveled me out. She took me back to my seat, doing that thing that nice grown ups do where they enfold you with their presence, shielding you with their torso as they usher you back to a safe place. I don’t know how much trouble Dirk/Karl/Dick got into, because he was gone when I returned to my seat. There was an apology later, but all I could think while he was fidgetily spouting it was, “I just want you not to be in front of my face.”
Sometimes the ESL invisibility cloak would fall because of my own doing. There was absolutely no reason to pass by the scary Cholo guy that had been busted for tagging the wall near the school’s administration building and poke fun at him. He had been caught spraying graffiti gang names on the beige expanse; we all had heard about it. By late afternoon, he was out there, ordered to cover up his tag with brush and paint bucket. I remember thinking, “dumbass” – problem was, my editorial materialized into an audible chuckle. I think even in my compromised, new immigrant state, I was still myself and I was still a smarty-pants.
I kept walking just a few steps and then…chase! I could hear his shoes on the paving, and barely looking back, started to run. Cholo guy was at my heels, with a drenched brush of paint flailing in his right hand. Lucky for me, he was big, but I was faster. Still. Do not try this at home.
About 5 weeks into the semester, my ESL teacher, Mrs. Kirchner announced to our classroom full of mostly Latino and Korean kids that we would be learning a dance. Of all odd mixtures, Mrs. Kirchner, a Hungarian, and her husband were way into…drum roll, please…square dancing. She had to explain to us what square dancing was and through the weeks she paired us and really taught us the choreography carefully. In a couple of lessons we would be deep in do-si-dos and John Denver. To this day, it is comical to me that I know all the words to… “Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong…” and that the term Mountain Mamma warms my heart.
As time went on, she revealed to us her true intention. We were going to be performing in the middle of an upcoming all-school celebration. We were mortified. So there we were. We were other, being taught a strange dance that screamed other in mid Los Angeles, California, by someone that was certainly other. Other, trice baked. That certainly went against the ESL invisibility clause.
But there was something in her innocence.
There was such joy in her face when she would bring the box full of petticoats from home to show us and to have the girls in class try on before the performance. And to be honest, that was the most glamorous part of square dancing. The reds, and the fuchsias, and the chartreuse tulles – mountains of them overflowing from the box – all trimmed in lace or satin edges that echoed, in a darker or lighter hue, the skirts’ main colors. This was a fashion party and a half! The feel of my fingers diving into the rough and beautiful rainbow of meshes made the idea of performing in front of the student body suddenly less worrisome.
But not so smooth sailing just yet.
People were always telling my mother where to go shopping for performance outfit parts for me at normal shops with normal girl sizes. The problem was I had a size 10 foot and was a lanky 5ft-9, even at age 12. There was the time in Lima with the black leotard that was meant for girls my age but which kept doing that slide-y thing because it was way too short for my legs, giving me that Penguin crotch look. Lovely. This time for the added curve thrown at us, Mrs. Kirchner had told my mom to get me Chinese black slippers from L.A. Chinatown. We tried to find something but the largest size barely fit me – my toes were sentenced to either stay impossibly squished at the front of the shoe, or my heels would have to oblige by being left out of the shoe altogether.
So, once the day of the performance came, I got out there with my ill-fitting Chinese slippers half way on, and danced the best I could, remembering all the steps while trying not to fling my half-way-on shoes off in all the motion. Round and round, don’t fall off. Do-si-do, don’t fall off.
We, all the ESLians, got through it. I got through it.
I wonder for how many decades that trial by square dance has saved me in moments when I needed the extra self-assurance of knowing I could get through anything. And I guess, I can thank those stupid, tiny shoes, which kept me so preoccupied with their discomfort, that the social death of square dancing in front of the tough audience of teens went almost unperceived. But mostly, I have Mrs. Kirchner to thank. There is something infectious about resolve. Even when an idea might seem misguided, it is good to have someone at the helm that truly believes it is grand.
Country Roads – performed by John Denver, written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZBQjTF_Hpk