27 Feb Oscar: Good Day Sunshine (photo: center)

Photo, left to right: Jorge, Oscar, Roberto 

You would never accuse Oscar of being a wallflower.  He came into ESL classes at the beginner level, having just arrived from Venezuela.  Oscar was part of a small minority in a school setting with respect to language acquisition; he spoke English when he could not speak English.  Most students would go through an extended silent period. He didn’t wait for time, experience or grammar rules to sink in; he just took the bull by the horns and jabbered away immediately.  As he told me much later on, he actually was very tired of going to school, especially high school. He had completed 3 years in Venezuela and now he would need another 4 years to get his diploma.  “Imagine,” he said, “seven years of high school?”

Lack of intelligence had nothing to do with his long tenure in secondary school.  He was very bright, very creative and hilariously spontaneous. At the end of his second year several teachers recommended him for the National Honor Society and the Gifted Program.  To complete the Gifted Program application, he wowed the interviewers, who had been initially concerned about standardized test scores that showed weakness in (English) language comprehension, obviously. 

Oscar was not just gifted intellectually, he was also a peacemaker. A classmate Charlie, usually the class clown but that day in a very bad mood, came in to class and without malice left long and black skid marks from his new shoes all over the floor.  I pointed this out to him but the timing was wrong to appeal to his usually affable nature . Charlie was quickly in my face. I was asking him to back off or I would press the literal panic button for security help. It was Oscar who saved the day. As Oscar entered the class, he instantly assessed the tension in front of him and said to Charlie, “Charlie, how ‘bout a tango?”  And as they tangoed Oscar showed Charlie that if they dragged their feet, they could remove the skid marks and entertain the class at the same time. In no time the skid marks were all gone and class started with everyone having a good laugh.

In his senior year Oscar would often stand in the over capacity lunchroom and direct student traffic, barking to teenagers to get to class.  He was short in stature, had no identifying ID as an administrator, looked like a student, but with the authority of a seasoned disciplinarian and acting ability of an Oscar contender,  he pulled off the near impossible. The students would look at him, he would assure them he meant what he said, and they would move faster. It takes a lot to get students to move faster out of the cafeteria and back to class.

That same senior year his family moved from the US to Spain where they could apply for legal  residency. Oscar decided to stay behind and lived with many friends to complete his last year of high school. He even spent summer nights sleeping in his car. To support himself he worked two or three jobs. After graduation he joined his parents where he could have opportunities for work that would not have been possible in the US.  Over the next few years I heard he had worked in the UK; that he had become an air traffic controller; and finally that he was a manager of a large and prestigious hotel in Madrid. He was an unforgettable character and my guess is that the hotel management and guests who interact with him would benefit from his quirky personality, that was full of diligence, from his intelligence and most of all, from his irrepressible sense of humor.