Alfonso starts laughing before he even begins to tell this story.
Back in the 1970s, when lunch hour sometimes included a meal and some alcoholic
refreshments, an employee named Jimmy Erwin was supposed to meet an inspector
at a job site. According to Alfonso—who went up through the ranks as a laborer,
truck driver, foreman, and superintendent—Jimmy decided to stop at a bar across
the street for lunch and proceeded to have a beer or two. His plan was always
to walk back across the street to meet the inspector, but needless to say, Jimmy
lost track of time. When the inspector showed up, he didn’t see Jimmy but he
saw his truck parked at the bar. So he waited another twenty minutes. Finally, Jimmy
came out of the bar, saw the inspector, and walked right over to him, never
skipping a single beat, and yelling, “Don’t EVER order pizza in that place!”
—Margaret Kirk [names changed from original]
My youngest, The Pudge, has a Spanish class that he does very well in. His teacher (who's a little nutty and probably a lot of fun with a tequila or 4 in her) let's all of her students pick a Spanish name for the year and that is who they are in class. The Pudge couldn't come up with a name, so I think his teacher reached back into her romantic past and gave him his name - Alfonso.
ReplyDeleteBuzz: Next time you run into a real-live Alfonso, call him "Pudge." See what happens.
ReplyDeleteMy youngest got four years of Spanish under his belt and said "never again." Unfortunately, he went to a university with a two-year language requirement. I said, "Try Latin. It will help you as a teacher, and you won't have to converse." Didn't work. He lasted one semester. So this fall, he begins two years of American Sign Language, which could be a blessing in disguise. And he's a bit of a ham in his own way, so he'll enjoy the performance aspect of it. That he's doing something that no one else he knows does -- that'll be his motivation.
His most interesting Spanish teacher, though, was a Russian who was sent to Cuba to teach Cubans Russian, and is now settled here. I'm sure she has some stories.