The 11th´s Hour

When I wrote the descriptions of my various classes the other day, I felt like I was short-changing my 11th graders. Then again, I only had them in my class for a month. They stopped coming to class because they had to take their standardized tests in order to graduate. But then the very night I neglected to mention that class, something very interesting happened involving them.
I had gone to bed at around 11 or so. For some reason I had very quickly started feeling like crap about a half an hour before I went to bed. Even before laying down, I felt a huge chill come over my whole body. I couldn’t stop shaking for around 20 minutes, so I got up to ask Abuela for another blanket. She gave me one, and I went back to bed, still shaking and feeling nauseous. I was really tired from a long day, and shaking and shivering like crazy, so I decided to pray a bit before I went to sleep. My thinking wasn’t too clear, but I believe my logic was that I should be sure to pray in case I died in the night. I admit, I probably should have DONE something to prevent dying if it was really that serious, but like I said: I was tired.
I managed to fall asleep, apparently, because after a while I began to have a really strange dream. I was hearing acoustic guitar, and a group of singers singing in Spanish. During the verses, I heard my name being shouted: “Ryaaaaannnn! Ryaaaaannnn!” That was kind of weird, but I just figured I was misunderstanding the lyrics…after all, I always thought that on “The One I Love” R.E.M. was shouting “Ryan!” when it was actually “Fire!” or “Riot!” Either way, it wasn’t Ryan. So hearing my name this time didn’t strike me as odd. But then there was a pause in the music, and I woke up. I was in my dark room, and I wasn’t sure why I had woken up. Then I heard a voice call again: “Ryaaaannnn! Wake up!” That really confused me, because I already WAS awake. In my stupid and fevered state, I was convinced for a minute that I actually had died. The fact that everything was still dark was more confusing, though: I couldn’t figure out whether I’d made it to heaven or hell. But the voices kept calling my name, and another song began.
Then the obvious, although strange truth occurred to me: the voices and singing were coming from outside my house. I got up, still very confused, and walked to the front door. The earlier shivering had led me to put on shorts and a shirt, so I wasn’t wearing just underwear, which is what I usually sleep in. This was fortunate, because when I opened the door, my nine 11th graders (plus one guitar player) were standing in front of my door singing a song in Spanish. I was majorly confused, especially since the song was a romantic ballad that talked about the need to buy a gun to protect your heart and shoot a woman if she hurts you. Very strange. Anyhow, when the song ended, I think they sensed my complete lack of comprehension, so they explained to me that when 11th graders finish classes in Costa Rica, they go door-to-door to their teachers’ houses and serenade them! I laughed and congratulated them, and left them all with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek, since I had no idea what else I was supposed to do with a group of students singing to their barefoot teacher at 1 in the morning.
They headed off on their merry way, and I went back inside, by this time not feeling sick anymore. When I passed by Abuela’s room, which is right at the front of the house, I had expected her (and the rest of the neighborhood) to be very annoyed, but I just heard her say “Que simpaticos!”—“How nice!” I told her good night and went to bed again. How nice indeed…

The following two tabs change content below.

Sitzman

Errand-Running Monkey at Sitzblog
Hey! I'm Ryan Sitzman, the person in charge of Sitzblog. If you want to know more about me, you can check out my profile on Google or go to my personal site, RyanSitzman.com. You can also click on any of the redundant little boxes to the left and it should take you to my profiles for all kinds of social networks. Thanks!

Latest posts by Sitzman (see all)