By the end of my first year in Dallas, I had learned a major lesson: In 2001, at any given hour of the day, there was always an episode of Law & Order on. The syndication rights had been split between A&E and TNT – two cable networks that had very few quality reruns to air – so on any given night I could catch two episodes. On Wednesday nights, I could watch an episode on TNT at 7, an episode on A&E at 8, and watch a new episode on NBC at 9. Every episode opens with two random people in the middle of some conversation/fight/embarrassing moment who stumble upon a dead body, the detectives (best season: Lenny Briscoe and Mike Logan) ask questions and find a suspect, the Lawyers (best seasons: Jack McCoy and Jill Kinkaid, the Swell Season of TV lawyer drama) try to pin the case. At my worst I would think that any given moment of my life would be an opening scene to a Law & Order episode; I’d be making coffee in the break room thinking “what if I suddenly heard a scream, run over, and there’s a dead body? Next thing you know Briscoe and Logan are on the case!”
Obviously I had to get away from the TV.
The OSLC was helping, but they only met Tuesdays and Saturdays, and I usually couldn’t make it on Tuesdays. Browsing the internet at work – you know you’ve done it! – I learned that the Dallas Library system was looking for ESL (English as a Second Language) instructors. There were a couple of reasons I thought this would be good for me. For starters, I wanted to do some form of volunteer work, partly because I had the time, but also because I was out of school and needed to believe I still had my hippie granola values still in tact. A larger reason came from a desire to connect with my Hispanic side. I often played the game “count the Hispanics” in North Dallas, where I would look around a restaurant and see if I could find any Hispanics who were not part of the wait staff. It was usually pretty low count. As the middle class half-Ecuadorian I felt out of place, and I thought this could help. Finally, the Dallas Library was right in the heart of Oak Lawn, gay central.
The ESL program was run by Claire, a early 20 something who had graduated from Austin, TX. Her large amounts of enthusiasm made up for her lack of staff or budget. The library had two computers with a variety of ESL software (Rosetta Stone was a favorite), but they didn’t have anyone to administer the machines. On weekends they would have students come to practice their English in a conversational forum. Since most of the group was other ESL members, it was very comfortable for them if they struggled. Most of the students were from Mexico, but there were a few exceptions. One woman from Zimbabwe had a lovely accent and I always loved the sound of her voice. There was another woman and her mother who had come from Columbia. She had been a journalist in Columbia, but they were having troubles finding work in the US. I loved talking to them about their backgrounds and histories.
It was talking to them where I learned just how not Hispanic I am. An eye opener was when one of the students invited me to her cousin’s wedding (I think she thought it was a date). It was a full Mexican wedding, complete with full Mariachi band. One thing about Mariachi’s – the reason that they are so popular is that if you’re Hispanic you’re supposed to know every song they sing. If you grew up in Mexico, you’d be exposed to all this music growing up. Having grown up in Minnesota, I had no idea what to do when everyone burst into song.
I volunteered for a little more than a year. The thing that made me decide to leave is when we got a native Texan volunteer. He had more of a teaching background than I did, but he spoke Spanish with a Texan accent (Hole-ah! Coh-moh Ess-tah Uu-Stead?). He also on his first day insisted on telling the students how to “correctly” pronounce their names (“It’s not Ed-war-doh. It’s Ed-ward. Ed-ward”). While I had to agree that he was probably helping more than I, I couldn’t take his approach. By that point, I was halfway ready to leave Texas, but that’s another story.
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