[Magdalen] 50 - 50

[Jim Guthrie]

From: James Oppenheimer-Crawford

>I've heard that often when Spanish-speaking kids study Spanish, the
>formality of the language throws them, as the language they learned in the
>home is a bare-bones version of the best the parents know anyway.

When Albert was in Junior College in Philadelphia, his Advisor suggested Spanish 
as a way to score an easy good grade. The explosion came with a fairly simple 
thing -- Spanish for "Zipper."  The professor said it was "cremallera" but 
Albert insisted that in Cuba it was [pronounced] "Zeeper." I later checked and 
found out Albert was right (for Cuba, at least). The professor who was trying to 
teach proper Spanish from Spain was not amused.

The second blowup was in his ESL Class. A big part of that was getting students 
to talk about everyday things and people in front of the class. At the time, I 
was commuting weekly among Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York, and piling up 
lots of frequent flyer miles in an era when the discount price was $198 round 
trip with a Saturday stopover. So I often splurges and had Albert fly out on 
Thursday night (he had no Friday Classes) and then fly east with me on Sunday 
night.

So standing up in front of the class, students would talk about going to the 
bodega with their Aunt on Saturday and the Church on Sunday morning etc. Albert 
would stand up and say "I flew to Los Angles on Thursday night, spent the day in 
Jim's Broadcasting studios on Saturday, and then we went to Beverly Hills and 
window-shopped on Rodeo Drive. Sunday we went to church and then Jim had to go 
to the studios again, and we went to the airport and flew to Philadelphia at 
night. I slept on the plane."

After a couple of times of this sort of thing -- trips to New York on Amtrak and 
staying either at the corporate apartment (which included a billiard room with a 
dozen old fashioned pinball machines) or quietly out at my folks on Long Island, 
the teacher got really sarcastic.

"Albert is now going to tell us about his weekend. I saw him get off his 
personal helicopter out in the ball field this morning." Albert was not amused 
by that kind of sarcasm -- I think the teacher didn’t believe his extravagant 
tales of his weekends, which in retrospect, I could understand.

Other times he described the Hollywood "stars" that he met but had never heard 
of (among the clients was the woman who as a youngster had played "Marcia" on 
the Brady Bunch, followed by a visit to a bar where the actor who played the 
father would hang out (a really grungy place on Western Avenue); and in all 
innocence described meeting in the studios another client whose identity was an 
absolute mystery to his fellow students but known the [male] teacher -- Linda --  
namely Linda Lovelace who had starred in "Deep Throat" which Albert duly 
reported to the befuddled immigrant class adding.

I met the teacher at a party some time later, and he told me some of the details 
of Albert describing his adventures -- especially stuff that Albert didn’t 
understand as a cultural reference, exactly (like the idea of "Deep Throat" the 
movie <g>).

So one semester of Community College was the end of Albert's Academic Career.

In retrospect (and also with knowledge of both sides of the story of his ESL 
class) I've always  lamented not having Albert around to describe the incident 
of the $1300 potato plants.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie