not actually blow offs

in the past i was a serious nose-to-the-grindstone student.  at the age of 8 i decided i wanted to be the valedictorian of my high school class because when i asked my dad what the word meant he said, "it's like being the best of the best."  i concept stuck and became a goal.

well, i made it.  4.0 back before there was such thing as "advanced placement," or grade point averages that could actually be higher than that (which are a disservice to modern society, by the way).

college was a different story.  i graduated bottom of my class with a 2.04 GPA("the lowest in the history of this university" as my oh-so-kind admissions dean informed me) ... not because of drugs, sex or rock 'n' roll (unfortunately), but rather because of severe depression, crossed with absolute revulsion of the way the university environment was run.  my hatred of the school is so intense that, to this day, i still don't refer to it by name in anything i write, including in my books.

there were two classes i took in the past that i considered to be blow-offs at the time that turned out to be incredibly (bordering on indescribably) useful.

one was spanish.  i took it for five years from three different teachers.  i thought it was hard and unwieldy.  my gringo accent was so bad that even i would flinch when i spoke.  when i did my homework i'd always arranged my pee chees in order of subjects i was doing the worst in, down to subjects i was doing the best ... that way, if i didn't have enough time to get everything done (from my endless procrastination -- which is one of my biggest problems to this very day).  inevitably spanish would either be on top, or just below english ... which made me dread it just that much more.

but there were some things i liked about the class.  it pushed an edge in me that needed pushing.  i was shy and uncomfortable with speaking in class -- especially when people were concerned about how you were saying things at least as much as what you were saying.  i needed that practice.  i could tell.

it also had a heavy theory aspect.that i found attractive.  i was becoming concerned with thing like past-perfect tenses of verbs.  weirdly, spanish was making me better at english.

over time i got confident and cocky.  i was reading cervantes in spanish (in fact, my comprehension in spanish was better than it was in english -- probably because i paid closer attention when i read spanish).  i knew about the mestizo problems in mexico.  i re-wrote the ending of a famous spanish story i didn't like and produced it as a radio play*.  i picked up smatterings of other languages -especially russian- because my teacher had made the mistake of saying "no english will be spoken in this class -- ever," instead of saying, "we will speak only spanish in this class."

and then i quit.

but what i didn't know is how important spanish would become in my later life.  it lets me travel with impunity in spanish and italian speaking countries.  it lets me read french and understand the gist of it.  it helps me understand latin.

i've lived most of my life in the western US.  spanish is easily the second most common language here.  there are physical and sociological areas where it is easily the predominate language.  i actually speak it a couple of times a week -- and read it at least every-other day.

yes, my diction is still abhorrent and i've lost the ability to conjugate in anything but the present tense.  but spanish class gave me the confidence to ignore all that and communicate.  i don't care if my listener laughs, cries, sneers, shudders or snorts when i talk as long as they know what the hell i'm trying to say.  i'll even pantomime like marcel marceau as i butcher one of the world's loveliest languages if i have to; but i never walk away misunderstood.

it's not an exaggeration to say that spanish class, crossed with a rick steves book i once read, is what gave me the ability to travel the world. and i've seen a fair amount of it.



and it wouldn't have happened without spanish class.


and that's cool.


the other class that's been unreasonably helpful is typing. i took it in 8th grade to fill in a place in my schedule that didn't really have any other classes that i could tolerate. it seemed like the least hateful option of what was available.


the class in itself was a riot. all the hottest cheerleaders. a couple homely girls. all the studliest football players (because they wanted to be in the class with the hottest cheerleaders). and me. aside from being the only circumcised man in a turkish sauna, i have never been more out of place.


manual typewriters were a bitch (although the mechanism itself was pretty cool). my speed was abysmal. my manual dexterity laughably questionable.


but ...


if your main male competition is a bunch of football players who are either ogling the chicks asses (make no mistake, they were definitely worth ogling) or figuring out how they can jump out the back window when the teacher wasn't looking (it wasn't worth jumping out of), it's not hard to stand out as best boy in class. i remember my teacher nearly weeping, more than once, when she saw both how incredibly hard i was trying (while having the most pathetic of results), and simultaneously feeling sorry for how hormone-lacking i was in this world of full-on rage.  


as i recall it was the last B i ever got in school (valedictorian qualifications don't start until 9th grade).

my graduation speed was 32 words per minute.


having worked in the computer industry (or simply taking a look at how many fricken 'blogs i have), i don't have to tell you how important typing has become.


sure, i have never figured out how a shift key works, but my speed with my thumbs only on a hiptop is almost exactly equal to my 9-finger speed on a manual all those years ago (fast enough, in fact, that i've had strangers truly agape watching me type).


yeah, i might hold regret over the fact i never had a piece of that cheerleader ass, but i'm sure as hell glad i never jumped out the window. (and knowing what i know now about ass in general, i wouldn't trade it.)




*i ended the story with "and castello washed ashore, with his severed leg tucked under his arm," instead of whatever insipid sappy ending it had.  the teacher loved it.  several years later i came very very close to being assaulted by a woman who had translated the same story as a senior project in her spanish class, with the same teacher.  when she handed in her translation, the instructor said, "that's not how this story ends," and summarily gave her a C+.  this, in turn, would have endangered a goal she had of being valedictorian had it not been for long discussions, some forms of definitive proof.  (probably resulting in her shaving five years off the end of her life.)  it took me awhile talk her down off the psychological ledge. in fact i was surprised by how hard it was to even put a sentence together, as she pummeled my chest.  que lastima.