Picaresque

I described my son the other day as picaresque as he has entered a a mischief making phase coupled with the usual mercurial up and down of his rage. Why am I driving 90 mphs each morning? Its not because I am late but because the sooner I can drop both kids off the sooner they are separated and the sooner they stop fighting. Its knives out every commute.

And when I said that the person listening said "What does that mean?"

"Picaresque? Like a roguish scamp that dodges in and out of trouble."

"And that means?"

"Pain in the ass, essentially. But still lovable! Don't get me wrong"

I know the word picaresque from the Spanish version picaresca/o. And I know this because in 9th grade Spanish we read El Lazarillo de Tormes which is considered the first of the genre. That is all I remember and that it was written anonymoulsy and like any Spanish* (The country not the language) book it was hated by the church and was satire but I never found this funny. At least Don Quixote and Sancho got into bar fights.

Huck Finn is kind of picaresque. The crew from Always Sunny is picaresque albeit usually these are younger characters. In describing my son I employ more the roguish qualities than the low social class or, you know, exposing the flaws of the supposedly civilized society (My kids be pretty basic. Save for the fighting. God stop fighting!).

I remember the word picaresque because of my 9th grade Spanish teachers, Mrs. Ceida Fernandez. Who then taught me in 12th grade Spanish AP lit. She was Cuban but vehemently left leaning and very pro-PR, which was a statement in my school that heavily catered to families who wanted to have their kids learnt to speak English well and/or catered to expats. "You guys, in your whole careers, here at Baldwin take 4 instances of US history and only one of Puerto Rican history. What do you think of that?"

Not sure but I know that Ticonderoga is a real kick ass name for a fort.**

Mrs. Fernandez seemed kind of odd because for a Cuban expat living in PR she was pretty anti-American. Or, I should say, anti-imperialist to use woke language. Which is funny because most Cubans living in PR were very pro-American and rather conservative. Its like the Cubans in Miami and part of why Florida is such a wacky electoral state.

This paints her as pretty negative. She was a great teacher and was always a straight shooter with all the kids. She was our 12th grade senior class adviser and my school had a Mormon kid named Jeb who spoke zero Spanish and she was cool with him speaking in her mildly accented English. Just this was kind of quirky but its an inside joke of a "you had to be there." Otherwise known as bad writing.



*Brief segue that how I learned Spanish is how you likely learned English especially in middle/high school. IE a lot of literature. And I loathed anything continental but enjoyed pretty much any Latin American and/or PR writer we read. This is because of not just where I grew up but also the school I attended. I am hyper aware of this privilege and consider it likely one of the greatest things I ever enjoyed. School is cool guys!

**And a pencil. Which teachers at my school insists is the best but I still buy them the generic kind. Its a pencil, everybody. To which they counter, "Yeah but THIS (holding up the Ticonderoga) IS a pencil!"