Chapter 36: Turnabout Is Fair Play

I went to sleep with a smile on my face, and slept as peacefully as I had in a long time. I found myself walking around with a smile the next day, too. At work, even Marco commented that I must have won the lottery given the smile on my face. I thought that in a sense I had.

And maybe because I was still thinking about Karen and last night’s dinner and was a little preoccupied, I was not thinking about Spanish syntax when Marco’s dad asked me something.

I rattled off an answer and went about my work. He must have made a sign to Marco -- I had my back turned, so I didn’t see -- but Marco followed up with another question that required a slightly more abstract answer with some nuances of meaning. And I answered him quickly, without thinking about it much.

“Tom,” he said, and continued in Spanish, “when did this happen? Are you practicing at home or elsewhere? That was perfectly fluent, no hesitation, and this wasn’t just conversational tourist Spanish, it was more complex, more subtle. You still have a little accent, but other than that it was spoken like a native.”

“I hadn’t realized it. No, the only Spanish I listen to is here. I don’t know how or why I stopped trying to think about the grammatical formation of the sentence, but this time I did and I just let my mind take over. So it was mostly correct? I wasn’t listening to what I was saying, analyzing it, so I don’t know.”

“Yes, it was correct. Like a native, as I said. Let’s practice that a little more today, see where it falls apart, if it does, and maybe work a little on the accent. Muy impresionante, mi amigo.”

Yeah, very impressive, and I still had no idea how I had done it. What was the trick that allowed me to suddenly synthesize all the rules and vocabulary to speak a language at least partially fluently? It would be really helpful to know. I’ll think about it later.

After work, I went off to Kim’s, because I was teaching again today. I took his advice and thought about what I wanted to cover, and how I would approach it. These were mostly younger kids, up to and including a few younger teens, so lecturing was not the right approach, something more active and physical.

We’ll do some warm-ups and stretching, then I thought maybe a couple of minutes of explanation of a technique followed by a demonstration, then practice within the group would work. We could work on a couple of different techniques in the time available.

I greeted Master Kim, then changed into my do-bok. At class time, we had the same crew as last time and a couple of newcomers, so my lesson plan was already outdated.

I saw one of the advanced belts, Jimmy Woo, and asked him if he had time to go over the basics of blocking and falling without injury with the newcomers, and he agreed.

I took the rest of the group, and it went pretty well. They worked themselves into a sweat and I thought they felt like they had learned something and, most importantly, had not become discouraged or frustrated.

I made it a point to call out someone’s performance when they looked like they had done it correctly, so they were recognized, which worked especially well with the younger kids. And by the end of the class they were pumped.

We ended by having them run across the floor to see how high they could jump to give me a high-five. They’d actually use that skill when we started jumping kicks.

As they dispersed to get their clothes and meet parents for rides home, I looked over at Master Kim, who gave me a nod and a smile. I took that as approval.

I rode my bike home and found we were having leftovers for dinner, surprise. But that was okay, because it was still good heated up. And there was leftover apple crisp for dessert, and ice cream.

I took a book and went out into the back yard to get the last bit of sun before it cooled off. I had almost dozed off when my mother called. “Tom, it’s Karen on the phone.”

In the house I picked up the phone, aware that either my mother or Mindy, or both, might be listening to at least my side of the conversation.

“Hi, Karen. How are you?”

“I’m fine. If I didn’t say it, I actually had a nice time last night. Thank your mother again for me.

“Listen, I was telling my mother about dinner, and she remembered that she hadn’t pinned my father down about what day we could have you over for dinner, so she got up and did it then. So he got backed into a corner and said, what about Friday, we’ll have a barbecue.”

“Why, who could have seen that coming? I’m joking, of course, he actually does a decent barbecue. He’s a good cook.”

“He’d be pleased to hear you say it. I think it was his secret ambition, and he gave it up to go into business as a manager. So he likes when people say they enjoy his cooking. So, Friday? Does that work for you?”

“I’ll have to cancel dinner at the White House, but he’s kind of a bore, so sure, I’m in. What time?”

We worked out the details and said goodbye. My mother was making an effort not to pry, though I thought I could see little beads of sweat form on her forehead as she wrestled with the urge.

I took pity on her. “Karen invited me to a barbecue with her parents on Friday. And she asked me to thank you again for dinner last night.”

“That was nice of her, dear.” It was killing her, I could tell, but she didn’t ask any more questions about my plans.

But now I started worrying. Should I bring something? What if I dressed too informally? Were her parents as inquisitive as my mother? Why was I suddenly obsessing about this. Ohmigod, my mother’s neurosis must be genetic, I’ve inherited it!

I caught myself and took a deep breath. Nervousness at meeting your girlfriend’s -- if I could presume to call it that, since we had never formalized the relationship -- parents in a ‘getting to know you’ setting was bound to be a little nerve-wracking. It would be fine, they’re nice people.

But I should think about something to bring to dinner. Maybe my mother would ... wait, I’m going to ask my mother for advice? Has it come to this?

Well, maybe it would help her feel involved, less shut out, that might make her happy.

“Mom, perhaps I should bring something on Friday, but I have no idea what. Any suggestions?”

She thought for a minute and suggested that a dessert offering would not be out of place. If I liked, she could make another of those apple crisps, since Karen had seemed to enjoy it.

I thought that was a great idea, and thanked her. She’d have one ready for me before I left on Friday, but I should let Karen know that I’d be bringing dessert so her mother wouldn’t have to make one.

So I swallowed my nerves and told myself that everything was going to be fine, nothing to worry about, it’ll be okay. Then lay awake in bed that night listing all the things that could go wrong.

At work on Thursday, Marco and his dad must have laid out a plan of attack, because the conversational exercises were non-stop. Ostensibly they were just asking normal, shop-related questions, but formatted in such a way that it would require me to employ sophisticated responses.

I knew they were trying to find the parts of the language where I stumbled, and thus needed extra work. But to my surprise, I was feeling comfortable with it now, and I responded naturally. The two of them were both frustrated (that they couldn’t find something to trip me up) and elated (that they had been such excellent teachers).

I still had the accent problem, so they focused on that. They had me repeat words and phrases until I was quite sick of them or they were satisfied with the pronunciation, whichever came first.

And I realized that I had not been using Marco’s sense of pronunciation by listening in as I had with Mme. LeBlanc in French class. That odd little radio station that lived in her head recited the phrase correctly when she spoke it, and corrected it when she heard someone else speaking it incorrectly.

Marco must have such a thing somewhere, so I looked around his epicenter and found something similar.

It wasn’t quite like the little ‘translation radio’ that I had heard with Mme. LeBlanc and Mme. Connolly. Maybe it was because those two were not native speakers of French and had to go through a translation process, which is what I had heard.

Anyway, Marco seemed to have a similar place where the words were formed before they were spoken, and once I learned how to listen in to that, I could hear his pronunciation, or his mental correction of mine. And hearing that, I could fairly easily fine tune my accent until it was acceptable. Not perfect yet, but getting closer.

And by the end of the day, he was positively beaming. I was his success story, and I’d bet he’d be bragging about it to his wife over dinner.

I went to class after work. I wasn’t teaching, but I hadn’t taken a class in some time and I felt like I was falling behind. So I worked at it extra hard and wound up going home exhausted. Probably a good thing, because I fell asleep right after dinner and slept through till morning. Fewer hours to have to be nervous.

On Friday I found it difficult to concentrate on almost anything. I read the paper and didn’t remember anything I had read there. I tried a book, but my attention would wander.

I finally sat in front of the TV and watched videos of mindless comedies until late afternoon. I could smell the apples and cinnamon that my mother was preparing for the apple crisp she was making to bring to Karen’s.

I went and took a shower, then shaved and found some clean clothes, something appropriate for a barbecue and eating outside.

The phone rang and it was Jeffy, wanting to know if I wanted to go to a movie. I told him I had other plans, maybe tomorrow. He told me he couldn’t do tomorrow because he and Kate McGregor were going to a movie. “Jeffy, you stud. You asked her out?”

“Yeah, I ran into her at the mall and we got to talking and the topic came around to movies, and I asked if she’d like to to go to one with me. She didn’t even hesitate, man, she said sure, she’d like that.”