One day while in the third grade I woke up. I don’t know how it happened, or why, but it did. Before that I don’t remember how I thought about things. I remember many things before third grade, of course, but I don’t remember what I thought about them, or if I had any opinion at all. But some time during the third grade, in a science class I think, everything changed.  I saw the planet differently first. I understood how things grew and died around me. I saw how the sun and the moon affected everything. Shortly after that I saw people differently. Married, single, old, young, white, Mexican, ugly, pretty, poor, rich, sick, dying…I saw all of them. I had seen them all before but I never knew what they were and I certainly didn’t have these labels for them. And now, because I labeled these things, they started to affect me differently. I no longer had little child eyes.

I wondered if my friends felt the same. Alma Serda, San Juanita Fuentes, Dalila Gomez, Elvira Serrano, Robert Alaniz, Bobby Andrade, Velma and Norma DeLuna, Juan Martin Gonzalez…they never said anything. But then again I didn’t either. I wouldn’t have known how to explain it anyway.

One day this lady came into our class and called out some names. All those on the list were told that twice a week they were going to go to a special reading lab. I was a pretty good reader so I thought this was a class for good readers. Those of us on the list started going to the lab twice a week and sitting at a computer that would read to us. We had these huge headphones on and listened to stories and then answered questions. I actually liked it. I felt special about being picked out as a “special reader.” The adult instructing us told us that the class was only for the best readers in the school. One day, while in the special reading lab, I got ahead in the reading and requested to go to the higher levels of the reading instruction. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to do that and that I should just redo the last levels I had worked on. The instructor was right behind me talking to another teacher. I started the level again but my headphones unplugged from the computer. Behind me I heard the instructor say: “This mojado thinks he can read.” I can’t even explain how much that hurt and how confusing that was.  I could read. I knew that. I didn’t understand. It became more confusing later when I found out that the white kids in our class had their own reading lab and they were allowed to read at the higher levels. I didn’t get it.

I talked about this with some of my friends but none of them had anything similar happen to them. They were happy with everything. Especially Juan Martin Gonzalez. He didn’t speak much English but understood most of it. Even his Spanish sounded funny. He said, “…not to worrying” about any of it because we are all mojados.  He said that we all might have crossed a river to get here but those white people crossed an entire ocean. You could not get more mojado than that. “Then why do they hate us?” I asked. He said that they don’t hate us. He tried English again, “They don’t like….the…the flavor of us.”  I begged him to stop talking English. He went on to explain that what I had experienced he experiences all the time at school, at church, and especially on the welfare line with his mother. It’s not hate. He said that adults don’t like things that are different: different colors, different smells, and different flavors. And the Mexican flavor was their least favorite. It was as simple and as complicated as that. I did not understand what the hell he was talking about and I made a mental note never to ask him anything important again. The only place I ever saw white people was at school. There were no white people in my neighborhood. Nearly all of my teachers were little old white ladies. Mrs. Corpestein, Mrs. Lyons, Mrs. Carpenter, Mrs. Payne, Mrs. Espensen…if I had any teachers other than white ones I don’t remember. They were all great teachers. Of course I didn’t know that then. At the time they were just a bunch of old ladies trying to make me white, but I figured that was their job and they had to do that.

I did enjoy Mrs. Payne’s fourth grade class a lot. Mrs. Payne was maybe 60 years old, salt and pepper hair (mostly salt), very white skin with deep wrinkles, and she always wore a scarf. I saw her eyes only once because she wore prescription glasses tinted an ugly dark green. She had bright blue eyes. What I liked about the class was that she would let us bring records to school. We could bring our 45s and play them during down time in class. One kid brought “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks. Another brought “When I Need You” by some unknown guy. I brought “Rockin’ Robin” by The Jackson Five…it was my sister’s record. The song I remember the most is the one Mrs. Payne brought. It was a song called “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon. If we played our own songs she would make us listen to hers. I hated it. We all made fun of it and rolled our eyes or covered our ears whenever it was played. Hell, the first hundred times I heard it I thought it was a girl singing. But eventually, like Mrs. Payne, it grew on me. She made us learn the lyrics. Of all the songs we played this was one we had to sing along with. So here were all these Mexican kids singing along with Paul Simon who sounded like a girl. I never liked the music but I came to love the lyrics: Like a bridge over troubled water I will ease your mind. I knew she wanted us to hear a message, but we were too young to understand, or care.

One day we had a party in class. Everybody was having fun dancing and eating cookies, cake, and drinking punch. We listened to records the teacher had let us bring to class. Someone had brought a record of the song “Rock the Boat.” It was a cool disco song and everyone liked it. Some kids were dancing and I was sitting at a table talking to friends. The song was blaring away when I saw Juan Martin Gonzalez sitting in a chair in a corner of the room. He looked weird. I can only describe it now that he looked like he was having a stroke. He was sitting there kind of slumped over and staring straight ahead at nothing. He was in daze. I saw him trying to get up off the chair but then gently sit back down. I walked over to him and asked him what was wrong and he didn’t say anything. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. He then looked up at me asked, in Spanish, if I was listening to the song. I told him yes and asked him why? “Ayi! Ayi! Listen!” he said in the loudest whisper I had ever heard. I listened but still didn’t understand. It turns out that he was talking about some of the lyrics to the song. He was referring to the lyrics: “I’d like know where you got the notion.” He told me that it didn’t say the notion. He said it said panocha. I looked at him. He was serious. When the lyrics came around again I listened closely. Sure enough it said panocha. Now I was having a heart attack. You don’t talk about girls’ private parts but here was this song blaring it out loud for every one to hear. I was sure I was going to pass out. He said, “See! Por que quieren saber if we have panocha?”   We looked around like to see if anybody else had heard it. If they had they did not let on. We didn’t know what to do. Together we went to the table and got some cookies and fruit punch. We slowly walked to the door careful not to make eye contact with anyone. We then gave one last look around and ran down the hall laughing and screaming. Laughing because we were so much smarter than anyone else and screaming because we really did not have much of any idea what a panocha was. Things haven’t changed much since those times. I do know now what a panocha is, of course, but the word still makes me laugh and the real thing sometimes sends me running and screaming down the halls.

One of my best buddies in elementary school was definitely Chris Chandler. He was this big white kid with black plastic rimmed glasses and a hair cut that looked like his mother put a bowl over his head and just went at what was sticking out with some scissors.  He was huge, easily twice as big as anyone in our class. He spoke very slowly and people generally got the impression that he was a little slow. I didn’t. For some reason both of us connected. He got into the habit of calling me “boss.” I don’t remember why that happened but that was the way it was. He followed me around everywhere. I get the feeling he was the only reason I did not get beat up by any bullies.

One time there was going to be a huge fight between the three 4th grade level classes after school. I no longer remember why the fight was going to happen but I was definitely going to go represent. The school had a large yard right in the center of it with this large tree stump right in the center of that yard. The stump was at least 3 feet tall. Generally right after the last bell of the day that yard looked like it was swarming with ants—kids heading all in directions across the yard. Somebody figured that it would be a great place to fight and maybe no teacher would even notice with all the other students running around. Well on that day the bell rang and I went out to the yard and got right in the middle of it. I saw one of my friends down on the grass getting kicked. I ran toward him to help. Just as I got near him Chris Chandler came out of nowhere and swooped me up. He took me to the middle of the yard and put me on the tree stump. He then got down to business. Little kids bodies were flying everywhere Chris went to in that yard. I spent the rest of the fight shadow boxing enemies from on top of the tree stump. Every once in a while I would direct Chris to a certain location to deal out some justice but for the most part I just watched. It was awesome. After the fight Chris got me off the stump and put me on his shoulders and I raised my arms in triumph, hands clasped above my head. It was one of my coolest moments in elementary school. Chris got a bloody nose.

I think I eventually got past the incident in the special reading lab. Though after it happened I stopped reading stories. I don’t think I ever read a complete story after that. Even in high school when I had to read stories. I did, however, get into reading a lot of nonfiction. But the creative stories no longer had my interest. It would be decades before they ever would again.

I think I understand Juan Martin Gonzalez now. He had it right back then. He understood who everyone was and where they stood and he did not let it bother him. He laughed at it. I think he knew that people, of all kinds, are an acquired taste. And that eventually all the flavors would blend together. And Mrs. Payne’s message eventually got through. These little old white ladies cared about us. They did the best they could with what they had. It was a tough time for everybody.

I miss those times in elementary school. I miss my teachers and especially all my friends. But what I miss most of all, I think, is the innocence. I still don’t know what the answers are. I would like to think that the answers lie somewhere in between what Juan Martin and Mrs. Payne taught me. I miss not knowing I was a different flavor. I miss not knowing that adults could be so mean, so wrong. I miss running down the halls laughing and yelling and not caring what the big people thought. Those days are gone for all of us. I often wonder where Juan Martin and the rest of them are. I wonder if they miss those times like I do. Hell, they’d have to. Don’t you?