Chapter 28
Do You Want the $1 or $2 Empanada?
I went to buy an empanada during lunch.
“One dollar or two dollar?” the man asked.
“What’s the difference?”
“You no know the difference.
You get the one dollar.”
I got the one-dollar empanada.
I leaned against the railing in the commons area.
I had no idea what it was made of, but it tasted good.
A spoiled boy walked by and dropped a napkin on the floor.
Right in front of the janitor, who had just finished cleaning it.
He didn’t even look at her.
I stopped him. “You were raised better than that.”
I expected him to walk off and leave me to pick it up.
I would have.
Three Panamanian boys stepped forward.
One told him he had to listen to that teacher.
The boy looked confused.
He didn’t argue.
He threw it away.
“Miss,” the janitor said softly.
“Thank you. Most don’t care if I’m disrespected.”
“I’m sorry.
There’s a lot of that here.”
Later, I stopped one of the three boys.
“What’s the difference between the one-dollar and two-dollar empanada?”
He looked at me for a second.
“The two-dollar empanada has a joint in it.”
I believed him.
That was the problem.
I found myself in the principal’s office, waiting…
lost in my own thoughts…
There was eighty percent of a bridge in Panama. That’s because twenty percent of it had holes you could see through.
The Bridge of the Americas always had holes in it.
Not potholes.
Actual holes.
Holes large enough to lose a teenager through.
They would patch one side, and the next day another hole would appear somewhere.
“Hang in there! This bridge still works!”
There was a sign posted on the bridge that had the hours traffic was meant to go toward the north and then toward the south.
The sign was factory made.
Let that sink in.
And one day, driving past another missing section of the roadway, it suddenly hit me:
London Bridge is Falling Down…
Panama’s bridge never had a nursery rhyme.
Most nursery rhymes are centered around fear.
I viewed Panama’s children as fearless.
They could cross that bridge on a bicycle with a refrigerator on their backs, or fish out of the hole in the middle.
“Look Eva! I caught a rainbow bass…
never mind, a barracuda got him on the way up.”
In Panama, transportation was iffy at best. Boats could wait in line for weeks to go through the canal. People have swum the English Channel in less than a day.
It took an engineer and three men to operate the train system. Yes, that was train, singular. One man sat behind the engine with his hand on the brake. The other three men, taking turns carrying a lantern walked in front of the train as it moved down the tracks. Their primary job was making sure the rails were safe.
The lantern was for when the headlight went out.
Transportation wasn’t the only problem. The animals carried their own hazards.
Butterflies had poisonous dust on their wings.
Frogs could make you hallucinate.
After licking one you might even think the train was safe.
But the termites were the worst.
They could build mounds taller than a man and ate through concrete.
Which, in hindsight, might explain the bridge.
My thoughts were interrupted when I was called in by the principal.
I quickly explained the difference between the one-dollar and two-dollar empanadas.
“Mrs. Jackson,” he quietly said.
“Why did you tell me that?
Now I have to report it.”
“I just have this knowledge in my head.
I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Sir, I don’t care if you report it or not.”
“Well, next time keep your mouth shut.
Now I have to report it.
It’ll be two weeks before the new guy gets clearance.
No empanadas.
Disgruntled students.
In the end, nothing changes.”
He wasn’t shocked that drugs existed.
He was frustrated that I had made it official.
I went back to class.
I didn’t even tell my husband about that one.
Daniel's Den 