Let me preface this entire post by saying this:
I have never met the Gypsy Kings.
I know little or nothing about the Gypsy Kings. As far as I know, they could be neither gypsies or kings....but I have always been interested in reading about the real lives of gypsies in Europe. Especially in the early 1900's. Anybody got a good book about this to loan me?
Okay, so I've had the song Bomboleo on the juke box over there and I don't know if you have been listening to it or not, but I have. I am telling you what, I have almost had flashbacks hearing
that song.
Isn't it crazy how certain things
trigger such strong memories?
And you can't control it.
You never know what the trigger will be.
Some things you learn will trigger memories every time---like a coke that really burns your throat or the smell of a musty garage will immediately conjure up the image of my grandmother's garage where there were always Coca Cola's in the little glass bottles. And a chest freezer that you could have fit a family of five in.
My mother has that giant freezer now.
It's like Noah's ark or something.
And I think it's from the 1940's. No kidding.
And it's still working.
But what does that have to do with Bomboleo?
Nothing.
Or should I say "nada" and impress you with my Spanish literacy? Oh, read on. You'll see there is absolutely no Spanish literacy racing through my veins.
I have been so scattered in my thinking lately.
I keep distracting myself.
I hope you can follow.
It always generally comes together in the end.
I took Spanish as my foreign language in high school and my teacher was Senora McCullough. Senora McCullough was a mal teacher ("mal" meaning BAD). She was muy mal. In Spanish class, if she didn't have a lesson prepared for us that day, we would watch Speedy Gonzales cartoons. Honest. And we got a 100 for the day if we would write down one word in Spanish that we heard on the cartoon or something we observed about the Hispanic culture.
From a Speedy Gonzales cartoon. This must explain my vast knowledge of the Hispanic world. We also could earn what she called "homework coupons." A homework coupon could be cashed in for a 100 when you had not done your homework or, if memory serves me, I think several of them could be put together to get you out of taking a quiz or something.
There was another Spanish teacher, Mrs. Hale. She looked like my mother. I wonder how many people in our small town have come up to my mother and said something in Spanish and gotten no response at all. My mother knows even less Spanish than I do, if that is possible. Mrs. Hale actually TAUGHT Spanish to her students. By the time they got to Spanish II, they weren't allowed to speak in English in class. That would not have happened in Senora McCullough's class.
Right after I graduated,
with my wealth of knowledge of the Spanish language,
Senora McCullough was dismissed
from her duties at our local high school.
Shocking.
To replace her, this young nerdy guy came
(fresh out of college)
to the high school to teach Spanish. I was already gone from the high school. I was going to the community college nearby and working as a cashier at a grocery store. This is how I met the new Spanish teacher: He would come and get in my line at the store and talk to me. It didn't occur to me that he wasn't actually, you know, buying things he needed from the grocery store until he told me he just came to talk to me. He left a note on my car. It was so juvenile. I think
I still have it somewhere because it was just an amazing thing to see. You wouldn't believe that an adult wrote it. Even his handwriting looked like he could have been
in the 4th grade. He was asking me out in this note.
Sigh.
We never went out. I think I met him at a ballgame and
walked around with him briefly,
but it just wasn't going to happen.
He did nothing for me.
It must have been that language barrier.
He was so fluent in Spanish and I..., well,
I was a Senora McCullough prodigy.
How do the Gypsy Kings play into this?
Senora McCullough used to play their music in class. I guess she did this on days when the TV and VCR were already claimed by other teachers. The song that we all remember is Bomboleo. It gets in your head. After you hear it a few times, you will find yourself saying the word "bomboleo!"
And I must confess, I do not know what this song is saying. I do not know what "bomboleo" means. It's a first person thing, right? I think it has something to do with dancing. Maybe "bomboleo" means "I am dancing really well!" I do recognize a word or two here or there, but for the most part, I don't believe this song was ever sung in a Speedy Gonzales cartoon. There's one line that always makes me think the guy is saying "I don't have a coupon." And then of course there's the bit where they say this guy's name
over and over and over:
Ben Vereen. Ben Vereen. Ben Vereen.
Ben Vereen. Ben Vereen.
So if this song is something horrible with some terrible message, please don't tell me that. I don't want my illusions shattered. It's like this french song that James Taylor sings called Chanson Francaise (which I do know the title means "french love song") is one I have always been afraid of hearing translated. It's such a pretty, sweet song and I love to hear it though I don't know what it means. And if someone translated it for me and it was saying terrible things,
I'd be so disenchanted.
We don't want that, now do we?
I saw this European commercial once that was promoting this software or something that taught people to speak English. This family, maybe they were German or something, got into this rental car and the music came on blasting. It wasn't a real song, it was one made up for the commercial. The song just said over and over and over this one horrible line. I mean, it was
horrible. It would be banned from the airwaves if a song actually said this, but of course they were saying it on the commercial to be aired in various European countries. I wouldn't want to tell you what it said. But this poor family, because they didn't speak English, had no idea what it was saying. So they listened for a minute and started kind of feeling the beat and then they slowly start saying the lyric with the song---not knowing they were saying something no decent family would sit around saying.
If only they'd taken that English course!I wonder how often that happens. Probably not so much now as it could have in the past. My Cuban friend once told me that on I Love Lucy when Ricky gets mad and starts yelling at Lucy in Spanish, that he would say terrible things he never could have said on TV in English. At least not at that time. Nowadays people say things that shock me on TV. And I'm not even talking about cable. The networks. Have you had that experience? Where they say something and your jaw just drops because that would never have happened in previous years.
So what have we learned today, class?#1 Bell had a sorry Spanish teacher in high school.
#2 Bell has seen many if not all of the Speedy Gonzales cartoons.
#3 Bell's grandmother had a very large freezer.
#4 Ben Vereen must be very much loved by the Gypsy Kings,
if not the entire Hispanic community.
Buenos tardes, mis amigos!
Hasta luaga!
Chimichanga!
Posts
