Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
May 18, 2006

Fake Foreign Exchange Student is the Ultimate Hall Pass

Journal Entry:  February 21, 1986 (age 16)

I’ve been late for my Regents chemistry class a lot lately.  It’s right after lunch, and I have trouble rousing myself from the tater-tot-induced food coma that slows my metabolism to that of a mole.  And, as a mole, I see no reason to get excited over Avogadro’s number.

The first few times I was late, I came up with plausible excuses, like “The H2O fountain in the freshman corridor was sublimating,” or “I was monitoring methane levels in the library bathroom.”  But our long-term substitute teacher, whom I’ll call Mrs. Kokopelli, has been getting “long-term” enough to catch on to my act.

Today, I was running at least 20 minutes late, because of a climactic, triple-overtime finish to the Sixth Period Lunch Paper Football Invitational.  As I ran to the chemistry lab, my mind raced.  I needed an unusually creative excuse this time.  Inspiration struck when I spied a cardboard table set up near the school’s front office, where a few underclassmen were handing out “HELLO, My Name is” stickers for a sports banquet.  I grabbed a sticker and barreled on.

I had a prop, but now I needed an actor.  As I approached the science corridor, I saw one of my brother Dan’s best friends, a likeable senior named Al Zavar.  Alby, as he is affectionately known, had the three characteristics this assignment required – a free period, a dry sense of humor and an acute case of senioritis.  I filled him in on my plan, wrote his new name on the sticker, and stuck it on his sweater.

Together, we burst into the chemistry lab.  In a loud, officious voice I said, “Excuse me for interrupting, Mrs. Kokopelli, but I’d like to introduce everyone to a foreign exchange student who is touring our school today.  His name is Al Mendez, and he’s from Uruguay.”  As we took two seats in the very back of the class, students craned their necks and stifled their laughs.  Everyone recognized Alby, except our long-suffering teacher.

As she returned to her lecture at the blackboard, I raised my hand.  “Would you mind speaking slowly, so that I can translate for Al?”  So she went on with the lesson, stopping two or three times a sentence so that I could speak Spanish to Al.  I am doing only marginally better in Spanish than I am in chemistry, so this was a challenge.

“Yo estoy el CO2,” I told him.  He looked at me with a blank expression and said, “Si.”  “El agua esta muy largo,” I continued.  “Si,” he said, his mouth hanging open and his head nodding furiously.  By the end of class, I had to resort to a cyclical repetition of the only sizeable chunk of Spanish I have committed to memory.

So I did learn something today.  When spoken in Spanish with an air of scientific authority (and sprinkled with chemical jargon) the Lord’s Prayer can, to an Anglo audience, sound like a complex explanation of the periodic table.

“Padre nuestro, que estas en los cielos.  Con ARGON.”

© 2006 Tim Mollen

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