Translation

I have over the years, taken much offence to the fact that due to my last name and the color of my skin, I have wrongfully been accused as an expert in certain things. A short list of the talents that have been falsely associated with my skill set are; picking grapes; fitting 40 people into a Volkswagen; swimming across rivers; jumping fences; digging tunnels; making tamales; and drug trafficking.

Although most things I have taken with a grain of salt, the one thing over the years that still irks me is the fact that a good portion of the people that I have met over the years have expected me to speak Spanish simply by the assumptions that have been made by looking at me.

I have never been able to speak the Spanish language. God knows that my parents, especially my mother, tried like hell to teach me the language. My mom speaks the language fluently, having learned it at a young age along with English. My father doesn’t exactly speak it fluently, he does however, understand it well enough to comprehend what my mom is trying to hide from her sons when she starts in on one of her rants.

Like any good set of parents, they only wanted to provide a better, more comfortable childhood than the ones they had. This led them to purchasing a home in a relatively stable, small, upper middle-class, predominately white community. The situation did not allow for a lot of the use of Spanish, unless you counted the ritual ordering of a burrito or tostada at the neighborhood Taco Bell.

In a four year span covering Junior High and High School, I managed to take 8 semesters of the language without failing one of them, but never getting anything other than a B. I am more than convinced that the only reason I did that well was that my parents paid my teachers to get me through, not wanting to bear the shame of having the only Hispanic son in the school who flunked his Spanish classes.

Entering 12th grade, after years of education, three different teachers, and some unknown thousands of dollars spent by my parents, I was no better off than I was when I started. I was, at most times, able to conjugate verbs solely based on a simple chart that had been browbeaten into me. My pronunciation made me sound like I was Keanu Reeves, in a Spanish version of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…

“Yo quiero mas nachos, dude!”

“Dammit, Jake, stop saying ‘dude’!”

My sentence formation wasn’t much better. It was as if I was a third grader who knew how to count to 100, but was completely convinced that 30+70 equaled eleventeen. In fact, one of my Spanish teachers once had a meeting with my parents and the Vice Principal of my High School to discuss the possibility that I might have a learning disability.

When I spoke to my Guidance Counselor as to what my options for a major would be as I was preparing for college, the choice was rather easy…

“So what lets me out of a foreign language prerequisite?”

“Well, Jake, there’s engineering, and…”

“I’ll take it!”

By 17, I was convinced that I would never have to deal with the subject or situation again. I had my plan laid out, my entrance tests were complete, my school and major were selected, and I had been accepted and given a scholarship. My life was on cruise control, and I had no reason to worry about Spanish again. That is, until one morning in April.

I was sitting in my Advanced Placement American Government class, discussing the questionable morality of the actions of the ACLU, when a darker skinned, older woman stepped into the room. She spoke with some of the worst broken English I had heard in my life. It was in fact, so bad, that I have no way of describing it visually.

“I need Jakob.”

“Excuse me, there is no Jakob, but my name is Jake.”

I am indeed aware that I misspelled my own first name, but that’s how she pronounced it. The name Jacob sounds different depending on how you chose to enunciate the letters and read the word. This particular woman decided to make it sound Swedish, rather than taking the straight Spanish translation of Jocobo, which was odd considering she spoke as if she just crossed the border.

We started walking down the hall, her, another minority student that was pulled out of the class, and I. The two of us were rather confused, considering the facts that neither one of us had been in an ounce of trouble, and the rather random person removing us from our AP class had no discernable authority and sounded as if she needed remedial English lessons.

“Ma’am, what is this about? I am in the middle of a rather important class, and with all due respect I don’t appreciate the interruption.”

“You need a test.”

“What kind of test?”

“It’s for your English, for your graduation.”

“You mean an English proficiency test?”

“Yeah, that is it.”

I have been known over the years, for a complete inability to keep my mouth shut when challenged by any form of authority. I have been called staunchly indignant and the type of person who will do the opposite of what I am told, just to prove a point.

“The fuck I do lady! I’m going back to the class that you interrupted. It sounds to me like you are the one who needs to take the test!”

“For your graduation…”

“If need be, I’ll speak with the Superintendent of the district. But for now, you can take the test your damn self!”

I realize that the situation was out of her control, and I realize that she was just doing her job. I just needed a way to vent, and that seemed as good as any. I had never been so insulted in my life. Considering the fact that my SAT scores were high enough to have me recruited by Ivy League schools, and my English grades in school were exemplary, higher than those of my Spanish grades, I was well aware that I was singled out due to my Hispanic last name.

Two classes later, she tried again, thinking that I had calmed down and was going to be more cooperative. This time, I dragged her to the Principal’s office. With my guns drawn and firing, I confronted the Principal.

“What the hell is this about? They want me to take some sort of English proficiency test!”

“I’m sorry Jake, I know how this looks…”

“Do you? It makes the staff of this district look like a bunch of assholes!”

The random Hispanic woman chose this time to pipe in with her two cents…

“For your graduation…”

“I am not taking the test, and I am walking with my friends. If there is going to be a problem with that, I can take it up with the Superintendent, clear?”

My Principal, always the voice of reason, apologized for the incident and assured me that the matter was settled. The administrator of the test was still a little confused by the situation.

“What is this word, clear?”

My friends have at times, been no different than the random people I have encountered, assuming that there is some Spanish gene that is passed down over the generations. Almost same way that hair color and eye color would be passed down, my friends expected that I popped out of the womb able to have fluent conversations with Mexican nationals.

This was never more apparent than a day trip with a couple of friends into the Mexican side of Nogales. My friends had picked out an ugly blanket that no self respecting Mexican would own, and decided that it would look great draped over their couch. Unsure how to begin negotiations, they turned to me.

“Jake, you talk to them.”

“Why me?”

“Well, you’re Mexican, right?”

“Yeah, man, we have a secret handshake and everything! You had better turn around; we don’t like white people to see it…”

“I didn’t mean anything by-“

“Oh shit, dude I forgot my card!”

“What car-“

“My race card! I usually keep it with my Green Card, but fuck it if I didn’t forget that too!”

“Jake, you’re a fucking-“

“Hey, you’re blonde haired, blue eyed! Can you speak German?”

“You know the answer to that-“

“Can you speak German?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought!”

I turned my head and scoffed.

“Retraso de mierda…”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”