connection between healthy bowel movements and overall well-being. However, in Spanish, “Do you have a cold?” sounds like “¿Estás constipada?” This misunderstanding was not as bad as when in Spain, years later, in my rusty Spanish, I accidentally asked a bartender at a tapas bar for his penis (“¿Puedo tener su polla?”), when all I wanted was the chicken special (“¿Puedo tener su pollo?”). That lowercase o can keep you out of jail.
Ricky and I worked together for three years, from fifth through seventh. And at the end of sixth grade, after he had been tutored for two years, Ricky was honored as one of the twenty-five most improved Hispanic students in all of DC. At a formal ceremony, he received a savings bond, a personally signed certificate, and a hug from Washington, DC, mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon.
Ricky was no longer a D student or a “drug risk.” On the contrary, he was a straight-A student, a role model, and a class leader.
Ricky went on to great success in middle and high school. Unfortunately, a few years later we lost touch when he moved back to Spain. If you have exceptional Google skills, maybe you can help me find him. I’d love to get back in touch. Trouble is, every third male in Spain is named Ricardo García, and one particularly prominent Flamenco guitarist dominates the first few pages of hits.
My experience with Ricky sold me on teaching. I saw that I had the ability to help children. Plus, working with Ricky felt easy and natural, as if I was built to do it. So when I approached the job search during senior year at Georgetown, I decided to teach.
Being a member of the Georgetown University School of Business Administration senior class, but not planning an illustrious career with Arthur Andersen Consulting (wink, wink), put me in a funny situation. Suddenly, for me, all those mixers and dinners and cocktail hours where students networked with corporate recruiters were not sweaty, nerve-racking events, but free eats.
Honestly, I may have been a bit of an ass. I don’t know why, perhaps I was delighted to be free of their corporate grip, or maybe I thought I was a bit superior to everyone else in business school, but I’d show up à la Don Johnson in a T-shirt and sport coat. The simple absence of the collared shirt totally changes the outfit and its message at a corporate mixer. Wearing a collared shirt says, “I conform,” or at least “I respect you,” whereas not wearing it simply says, “Fuck you.” I also laughed a bit too loudly and ate food from the buffet like Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places. I was even known to wear leather sandals.
If this had been a movie, every recruiter would have been awed by my impertinence and brio and would have begged me to interview. But in reality recruiters probably didn’t notice my shenanigans, or if they did, they were probably just annoyed. I was like a drunk person who sees himself as impressive, charming, and witty, but to others just looks like a sweaty Kanye West stealing the mic from Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
I sent out résumés to every private school in northeastern New Jersey (I did not have a teaching certificate, so I could teach only at private schools). I interviewed with a few math departments and secured a position teaching algebra and geometry in Morristown, New Jersey. The apartment Larry and I found in Jersey City was twenty-five minutes away.
In Jersey City I found yoga classes being offered at the gym right in my apartment complex. The teacher, Janice, taught a toned-down form of Iyengar yoga, the same style I had practiced during sophomore year of college. This style focuses greatly on correct alignment. Put it this way: in his classic book, Light on Yoga, B. K. S. Iyengar includes five hundred pages of instruction and six hundred photographs.
Plus, Mr. Iyengar ranks the difficulty level of every posture. When I first read this book I was flummoxed to discover that the triangle posture, which I found difficult enough, earned a mere three out of a possible sixty, ahead of only a small handful of postures, such as mountain, the one where you stand with your arms overhead, as in, “Touchdown!”
I’m sure you’re wondering what Mr. Iyengar ranks as the most difficult yoga posture. It’s not the iconic leg-behind-your-head pose (called eka pada sirsasana, by the way) made famous by Yogi Kudu on TV’s That’s Incredible.*
To Iyengar, tiriang mukhottanasana rings in at a whopping sixty, the most difficult of all yoga postures. Tiriang mukhottanasana translates into English as “intense upward-facing pose.” Not for the faint of heart, this pose won’t be found in a level-one Anusara class. Even its name is no fun, unlike, say, upward dog, boat, or, my favorite, the wind-relieving posture — all child’s play at ratings of one, one, and one. Intense upward-facing pose is basically just touching your toes. No biggie, right? But it’s touching your toes from the wrong side, bending backward instead of forward. Yep, just bend backward until your hands are at your feet, and there you have a sixty!
Iyengar yoga, with its specific instructions and meticulous approach to alignment, is very effective in addressing injuries. So I was very lucky to have Janice early that school year, after a skydiving mishap in Southern California.
Let me begin by saying that when you are in a very small airplane halfway to a drop zone, you do not want your jump instructor to say anything like, “Shit, I forgot his goggles.” And you definitely do not want the pilot to answer, “Here, take mine,” as he swerves the plane while removing his.
Skydiving enthusiasts are, by definition, very cavalier. They are chill. They do tequila shots after a hard day’s work. I have my suspicions they do tequila shots during a hard day’s work. They’re half cowboy, half secret agent. They’re probably the toughest and coolest cats on the planet. They make Hawaiian big-wave surfers seem like Urkel.
And I am not like them. I plan. I analyze risk. I don’t eat chicken that’s more than three days old. I wear a belt from the Gap, for Pete’s sake.
But in college, two friends and I had decided to try skydiving. We had all backed out last minute, and so here we were a year later to make good. We met up in Southern California during a long weekend for one purpose: to jump out of an airplane.
Manuel flew to California first and rented a blazing yellow convertible Mazda Miata. He picked me up at the Los Angeles airport and we drove, top down, into the desert. Cordelia, who lived in Fresno, was waiting for us.
To save time and money we opted to jump tandem. That means we’d be strapped to the front of an instructor, like twins conjoined at the genitals. Because we were jumping tandem, we needed almost no instruction. So after signing a seriously long waiver that absolved the skydiving company for an exhaustive number of ways in which we might die, we received basic instruction and were ready to suit up.
My instructor was a slacker, and quite hung over, I believe. He lumbered off to wardrobe to find me a jumpsuit and came back with one that was much too small. But we were running late for the next take-off, so his attitude was “Ve shall make eet fit,” as he helped me stuff myself into the suit.
I couldn’t stand up straight. I hobbled over to the airplane and grabbed hold of a ceiling bar, and we were off. The plane fit eleven, plus the pilot. And since it was used only for jumps, there was no door.
Here’s what I remember. We take off. We get higher and higher. I look around. No door on the plane. The pilot gives me his goggles. Not an auspicious sign.
Cordelia jumps first. Then Manuel. Then it’s my turn.
My instructor mounts me. I’m his bitch for the next twenty minutes. We do an odd conjoined dance toward the door. I’m standing
