Back in the Day

So there I am, waiting to pick up my takeout, and the song comes on the radio. You know the one. The one that should have never been written, but was written by the band that never should have existed.

I can't even remember the name of the stupid song, but it was that one put out by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine back in the day. You know, the one about doing the conga. The one that was incredibly popular where I grew up near Miami.

"Hey! Miami Sound Machine! I know Miami! Yeah!"

This took me back to my days spent in grade school, at good ol' Palm Lakes Elementary. Ok, now for those of you who don't know (that's probably a few, because I don't really like to admit this), I was born and raised in Hialeah. 'Nuff said.

So, somebody at DCPS (Dade County Public Schools) had the brilliant idea that it would be beneficial to the small percentage of White kids at my school to be taken out of normal classes (such as math) and thrown into Spanish class.

Because of that, to this day I have problems with long division, fractions, and math. But! Thanks to DCPS, I've retained some knowlegde from that forced class! I still know how to say perro (dog), gato (cat), and mesa (table). So, if I ever find myself in a Mexican restaurant, and there's a cat or dog on the table, I'm all over that.

That class didn't even teach me the most valuable Spanish phrase. This is a phrase I used a lot when I was a courier working around Miami. "Mucho trabajo, un poco dinero." Which, I think means "Lot's of work, little pay."

Then again, I could be wrong about that translation. There was this one Cuban guy that was the parking lot attendant at the dog track who didn't speak a lick of English. So, I'd say that to him every week, and he'd bust out laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world. Then he'd point at me and say "Jew a fonny gringa!", and keep laughing as he lift the parking gate. He'd still be laughing when I drove out after making the delivery.

Thinking back, I do take offense at being called a gringa. <sigh> The things you do to keep the work environment comfortable.

So, back to the stupid conga song.

Here we are... must have been around third or fourth grade. The Youth Fair (county fair) was coming to town, and the school was abuzz with students working on their projects. Our Spanish teacher got it into her head that it would be a fantastic idea if her Spanish class did some crappy little dance to this song.

So, we got pulled out of even more classes (yeah, dancing to the conga song at the fair is much more important than learning about the Declaration of Independence) to practice our crappy little dance.

There we were in the PE field, about half a dozen White kids, trying like hell to magically grow some Latin rhythm and be able to dance this. Let me tell you something. Not one of us White kids had a nano-ounce (is that a word? It is now!) of Latin rhythm in us.

We were knocking eachother down, falling on our asses, stepping on eachothers feet, and generally ruining what probably would have looked a bit cool had some kids who could dance did it. Every now and then you'd hear the teacher (whose name I forget.... I forget a lot of things about South Florida, and that's the way I like it. It's not easy repressing memories!) groan "Aye yos mios!" and shake her head back and forth.

I guess finally we sucked hard enough to make her forget about it, because we never did end up dancing at the fair. Which is just fine by me! That's all a pre-adolescent kid needs is to be up on stage sucking at dancing, while a bunch of people laugh their asses off at you. Thank you Nordic Ancestors for not giving me rhythm.