by Andrew Moisey
(Most of the names have been changed.)
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About a two weeks ago, my calculus teacher missed an entire week of classes. All of us in the class knew it had something to do with some sort of surgery, but we had no exact idea of what was happening. Well, he returned the next Monday and told our class he was alright, and said that no, we wouldn't push the midterm back because (this makes sense) he was "feeling okay now." Anyway, in my discussion class on Wednesday, he told us that he was sorry he wasn't more open about his absence, and explained to us that he was initially diagnosed with some cancer but, after his wife begged him to seek a second opinion, the doctors told him there was no cancer and that he needn't have surgery. "I hawe the cleanest colon in the vorld," he brightly exclaimed. His face then grew dim and shady and he muttered, almost inaudibly, that his ill health was due to post-traumatic stress syndrome, brought on by three near-death experiences. Now, most people understand that when someone mentions having near-death experiences in such an inconspicuous manner, the last thing to do is probe these horrible memories for the sake of amusement. Unfortunately, Berkeley doesn't have any "most people" in its citizenry, so Jack Watson jumped the opportunity and shouted, "You said you had three near-death experiences. What were they?" Yes! 1) "Vell, you see, I was growing up in 1946. India, Pakistan, vere separate, and eweryone vas okay. Then, I lived on tin roof. One day, my mother told me 'go down, go down,' you know. Bullets. Vere flying. The Muslims came and captured my family. I saw them shoot all of my brothers and sisters. I escaped, I don't know. I don't want to talk about it." The whole class was silent. Everything was still except for the tear that slowly descended from Mr. Smith's thick eyeglasses to the bottom of his chin. After everyone heard it hit the floor, he pleaded me to break the silence: "Andrew! You alvays hawe so many questions. Vhat are you going to ask me today?" There was no way I could talk. I tried to make a noise, just any noise, but then, all of a sudden, 2) "There vas a time vhen I was on, you know, plane. The, uh, landing gear didn't come out." Which is what I hope happens to me on every plane ride. He didn't stop, though -- there was still one more story to tell. 3) "Do you remember '89 earthquake? Do you? Vell, after the earthquake, my neighbor asked me to look at the transformer. The transformer, you know, the box outside your house that.... I went to look at it, and, exploded. There vas a vire on the ground next to my foot. A 12,000 volt vire, not like the chair, that's only 3,000. 12,000, and it would hawe...I can't tell you how fast I ran, but like bullet. (Pause) So, vhat are you going to ask me now, Andrew?" I don't question crying men.  I think I'm glad I went to my Education 40 class the other day. Instead of our normal disinteractive lecture on race and ethnicity inside schools, our professor took our class to a heavily publicized debate over bilingual education which was to take place at Berkeley's extremely controversial Boalt School of Law. (Fifty-four PROFESSORS were arrested the other day for protesting its new no-affirmative action admissions policies.) Our professor got us superb seats in the limited-seating auditorium, an excellent feat considering 150 or so people were screaming to get in. Anyway, as protestors outside hollered outside the doors, two overqualified duos prepared to debate very poorly over how to educate children who cannot speak English. One debator, entrepeneur Robert Cleveland, awfully defended his initiative to put the kids in classrooms where they would only be allowed to speak English, which somehow he said would teach them English. The crowd, 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 9999999999999999999999999999999999999% Latino, jeered his proposal, somehow thinking that not only was it their right to be taught completely in Spanish, but that not being able to speak English would be okay when they applied for a job, since there are so many powerful positions in the US open for people who can't speak, read, or understand English. Well, the opposition to the proposal, crowd-favorite Margaret Simmons, won the debate be sounding very impressive in her native lawyer tongue without saying anything meaningful or pertinent. After the debate, those individuals who cared to question the debators lined up next to the stage. After the Berkeley idiots finished hogging the microphone not to ask questions but to hear how their nonsense sounded through the auditorium speakers, my shaking white ass stepped up the mike and in a pseudo-confident manner asked Ms. Simmons: "My name is Andrew Moisey and I am a student in Professor Daniel Wallace's (gotta plug my ghetto prof) Education 40 class. Ms. Simmons: you say that all students of all foreign backgrounds should receive bilingual education, yet what do you propose to do for a student who speaks a relatively rare foreign language but whose school district cannot find or afford a registered teacher for him or her?" The hispanic crowd was just elated at the thought that there might be immigrants who don't speak Spanish and that they might deserve bilingual education too. I was almost booed off the stage after putting their hero on the spot. Ms. Simmons answered me very well, though I couldn't tell you what her response meant. After she was finished, I somehow made it out of the auditorium unscathed.
To get my daily fill of Berkeley, I attended the BAN POLICE USE OF PEPPER SPRAY!!! city council hearing that evening. While the debate was just great, it disappointed upon comparison; this is the sort of thing that makes Berkeley better than television. The council hearing was held in the Berkeley community theater, an apt setting considering the performances that were to ensue. Seated on the stage were the eleven (I think) council members, mostly older women, and I think two or three men, though I'm not sure. One of the men on the council, I noticed as I strategically took my seat near the aisle containing the public microphone, already looked like trouble. His area of the table was laden with BAN PEPPER SPRAY signs and memorabilia, and he had this anxious look on his face, as if the greatest thing ever to happen in his life was going to occur that night at the hearing. My friend Katie sat down to my left, four seats from the aisle. In our row's aisle seat sat the same lady who went crazy at the Kurt Vonngeut talk, so I knew the night was shaping up well. I decided to test her mental state of the night. "Hey," I said, "weren't you at the Kurt Vonnegut speech a few weeks ago?" She stared at me like a blind person examines the Grand Canyon and then reached inside her jacket. Very carefully she pulled from her jacket a small, ornate oval picture and asked my right eye, "Do you know what this is?" Surprised to hear my mouth respond, she replied, "It's Mary, the Virgin Mother of God." I couldn't help myself. "And what does it do?" "It tells me exactly what to do." Anyway, I went up to the guy that I met buying Stones tickets. A few nights ago he told me over the phone that someone had just died from pepper spray in what I thought he said was Nevada, and he sounded really stressed then, so I asked him how he was doing. "Man, I've been up for two nights straight, man, like I've been being interviewed by CBS and NBC and all of 'em and tonight man..." "Wow, you must be stressed. This is my friend Katie." "Your cousin?" "No, my friend." "Oh." "Is everyone uptight about the other night in Nevada?" "Nevada, what happened in Nevada?" "Didn't someone die from pepper spray in Nevada the other night?" "No, not to my knowledge. How's your cousin?" "What do you mean?" "Your cousin in Iowa, the one who was sprayed?" "I think you're thinking of someone else." "Am I?" "Yeah." "What happened in Nevada, David?" "Nevada? Oh, you mean Navato. Someone died in Navato." "Oh." "Well, we'll be kickin' it in the parking lot of the Colosium a month from now, don't worry." "Oh, I'm not worried about that, I'm just really, like, WORKED from all this, and..." He wandered off. To make a long story short here are the highlights of the meeting, beginning with highlights from the three-minute monologues of two Berkeley citizens during the hearing. 1) 60-year-old bum, to city council: "Yeah, man I'm not sure about the whole pepper spray, but I know, you know, I support the Berkeley PD, man, 'cause I know what they did. They know what you did, man, and they, man, know. Yeah, 'cause you sent 180,000 over to fight in Korea, uh huh. I KNOW ALL ABOUT IT, MAN, SO DON'T THINK YOU'RE JUST GONNA GET AWAY WITH IT, MAN, BECAUSE I KNOW. They died, and they're dead now. Wait. Oh yeah. SO DON'T THINK YOU'RE GONNA GET AWAY WITH IT." 2) Thirty-five-year-old mother of like six, to city council: "I just got some ting to say abou thee paper spray issue. A wee ago. My chilren. They were playing in thee siewalk. They jus wri ting some ting. And the cop he pull up he say to my lil girl an he gra her an say, 'I going to keel you. You know no chalk on thee siewalk. He spray my lil girl with thee paper an her eyes star to blee. An she scree. And she cry. An thee police he jus get in his carr, an he drive away. MY LIL GIRL! HOW CAN YOU LET DEM DO DIS!?" Meanwhile, the lady in the aisle seat was giving her little girl a lesson on the Virgin Mary. 3) The leader of the Black Police Officer's Organization, to a concerned black lady against pepper spray in the audience: "Listen, sister, I know what you're goin' through. I grew up in the ghetto, myself, and-" Lady: "I didn't grow up in no ghetto! How the hell do you know me? I'm no dumb bitch from the ghetto! Who do you think you're representin'? Police Officer: "No, sister, you don't have to hide it. It's okay- all your ghetto kids, if they behave themselves, won't ever have to worry about bein' sprayed- Lady: "What did I just get done sayin'? I ain't from the ghetto! Who do you think you're talkin' to? Your bitch?"
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