One Foreign Language class assignment.  Two partners.  Three hours of disastrous implications. 

It was a normal morning in Spanish class when I rested my old book bag upon my plastic desk chair.  My teacher, whose name is literally un-spellible, waltzed into the classroom with her lunch in toe.  She always ate when she taught.  Class would begin with one or more announcements that I could never understand sadly.  Textbooks would open, and we would sluggishly complete an exercise we were bound to never remember.  During this time my teacher  would smack open and closed in a rhythmical manner as she consumed her lunch.  On one specific morning we discovered in the syllabus we were to complete some kind of oral assignment in the next coming days.  “What?  Why?  When?  Where?” echoed out of everyone’s mouth.   The only words I could speak in Spanish thus far sounded more like Pig-Latin.  My eyes began to water, my stomach lurched, and my little toe began to twitch.  The class ended half an hour early, which wasn’t abnormal, and I sheepishly walked up to her desk.  The remnants of her lunch resembled my pet dog’s lunch, and I slowly swallowed a gag.  After not noticing me for a few seconds, she looked up surprisingly.  Poor lass.  She was probably trying to remember my name.  “Yes,” she said slowly with her own native accent.  What was I to say?  I can only imagine what would happen if I blurted out, “I don’t think I should complete this assignment due to the fact my ability to speak Spanish could be characterized as a dog trying to speak English,” or my personal favorite excuse, “I’m planning on being sick this week.”   Three minutes later I grabbed my old book bag, and slumped it on my back.  I walked out of the classroom with all of the dignity I could muster.  The assignment was to happen whether my dog magically began to speak English, or I actually became sick.

There was a fellow student who attached herself to my side once she realized, early on, that I was dud.  She must have been in the same boat.  Her southern draw made the word “gracious” sound like “grass-is-us.”  She was sweet tempered, never frowned, and always had a bottle of Mountain Dew on hand.  The one shining glint of this assignment was the prospect of having a partner.  I planned on asking the super-star Spanish speaker to partner with me promising he or she my inheritance.  I was instead cornered by the girl with the Mountain Dew who had freckles that  shined under the florescent lighting of the shabby classroom.   I didn’t want to be the first person on the planet to make her frown, so I agreed to partner with her. 

“Let’s give em a speech on bakin cookies!” she exclaimed.  I breathed deeply.  I was loco.