preparation: two stories

Story 1

Tuesdays are long days. On Tuesdays, I go to CSULB for a little over an hour of Arabic and pay a little under $4 for parking (except for last time, when I stayed longer and ended up with a $40 ticket for expired meter). Then I go to Fullerton for phonology and Spanish lit with Mr. Wikipedia.

Given that careful planning is not my specialty, I usually spend the last 15 minutes at home frantically searching for quarters to feed the demanding parking meter and something edible to feed me.

This not being the ideal, today I decided to take some extra time getting ready. Most specifically, I spent some time eating and packing animal crackers and making tea in my to-go cup. (I also raided for quarters, but that is a story for another time.)

When I got to phonology class at 4:00, I was soooooooooooooooooooooo hungry. So hungry. I walked in and Lorena said "how are you?" and I said, "hungry." My friendly classmates offered Twix bars, mints, and sympathy. I took a mint (it was big; I thought it could hold me over), sat down, and reached into my bag for the textbook.

Then, at that very moment, for the first time in four hours, in between my phonology book and my binder, I saw my Ziplock bag of animal crackers. I was overjoyed! I said, "I have ANIMAL CRACKERS!"

It was a happy moment in phonology. My friendly classmates ate about five of the crackers. Over the next three hours, I ate the rest. And all was well.

Story 2

After phonology, Lorena and I and the few remaining animal crackers went to Spanish lit with Mr. Wikipedia.

Somehow, between last Thursday night and 4:00 p.m. today, I hadn't found the time to finish all of the reading for class. (For the record, I did take homework when we went away for the weekend, and I did do my homework. But I still ran out of time to finish.)

After about 15 minutes of class, Mr. Wikipedia suggested that we work in groups to compare and contrast two readings (an epic poem and a short story), and he went away for a half hour.

Left alone, our group discovered that only Lorena had read the cuento, only I had read the poem -- and only 4 pages out of 22, and that Oscar hadn't read anything. But he did have a cell phone with Internet.

So we settled down and combined my 4 pages, Lorena's grasp of the story, and Oscar's Google into one decent compare and contrast, if I do say so myself.

Mr. Wikipedia came back and started asking the groups for their conclusions. It soon became apparent that our group was the best-prepared. We were on a roll.

In the middle of said roll, Mr. Wikipedia asked something along the lines of "and what about idealization? What concepts are idealized in these readings?"

And I raised my hand and said that the poem by Espronceda shows idealized love in the experience of the girl and her pure love and faithfulness to Felix even though he is a jerky "segundo Don Juan."

"You are referring to Elvira?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, and exchanged triumphant glances with Lorena and Oscar.

"Well, what about the other woman?"

::silence:: Other woman????? There are no other women in the first four pages!!!

::puzzled look::

"Exactly!" said Mr. Wikipedia. "She tricks us, doesn't she?"