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Do you remember that year that you girls sang, "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things", from Sound of Music.
I think that was school year 1984-85, when the combined 7th through 12th grade boys and girls dorm consisted of you, me, my oldest sister, my cousin who was a year ahead of me in school but who was fifteen days younger than I (and she still is 15 days younger than me), and my other cousin who was in the car with my grandfather in Jundiai.
Anyways, these things may not cheer you up, like I'm hoping they do. They may not make the interview go any better, but here goes.....
Do you remember crowding into Bob and Fay's bedroom on Friday nights to watch A-Team on that little black and white TV? For one hour (out of a possible 168 hours during a week), we were permitted to sneak down to the swamp of American culture and sneak a peak into the wonderful world of television. My sister and I had watched the first season of A-Team while on furlough.....the pilot program came out the week before the Redskins beat the Dolphins in the Super Bowl. So, after many years of secret prayers, kind of like Hannah in I Samuel, we finally got to watch TV on the land at Vianopolis. This paved the way, so that by school year 1985-86, the doors of hell had swung wide open, and we were able to watch Formula 1, soccer, Super Cine, volleyball, and the Super Bowl on a one-week tape delay (somebody sent the tape).
Do you remember watching that same little TV in the kitchen in the dorm (right next to the best sweet tea ever made----Aunt Fay's sweet tea (going out on a limb here, but holding fast to the horns on the altar)) on election night in 1984.....Tammy Decker was at the dorm, and we were watching one of the biggest electoral college landslides.....Reagan said later he would like to have won Minnesota as well, but heck, that was Mondale's home state. I think that is where my confusion started as to red states and blue states, because you couldn't really tell the difference between red and blue on a black and white TV.
Do you remember Lenita in the living room studying verb conjugations and memorizing texts for Jean Wright's portuguese class? She would study so faithfully. Ben Pavkov and I didn't study as much....we were much more focused on doing just enough so that Jean would bring that felt-covered soccer table (with a marble and ice-cream stick paddles), and then we would have a rip-roaring time playing Jean and Lenita during Friday classes, two days before our spontaneous portuguese testimonies during Sunday night services. (Ben spoke Portuguese like a Brazilian...he even had a goiano accent....sort of like Miles, although Miles still betrays just a hint of Chattanooga, depending on the issue)
I remember, during a sweet-tea induced "tell all" session in the dining room in the dorm (that dorm did have a good layout), telling you, my sister and my two cousins about my infatuation with a young lady I had met at refresher course in Camdenton in June/July of 1983. I don't think I had actually said a word to that girl.....I had my eye on her the entire time, but I think the limit of our sexual connection was a hand shake (during a game of capture the flag with 20 other people standing in a radius of 10 feet) near some of those luxurious apartments past the pickle pond. Anyways, you ladies were intrigued by this lost love, and wondered why I never had the courage to write her. She studied at Tama Tama. The next year, 1985-86, a young lady arrived from Cuiaba, and I forgot all about Ms. Fyock.
Going back in time, to 1980-81, your brother and David Caylor were greatly amused by my attempts to re-write the laws of electricity by plugging one end of a wire into one hole in the electrical socket and the other end of the same wire into the other hole of the same socket. David Fread came out (once the circuit breaker went....leaving us all in darkness), but he was very kind, and I was allowed to proceed to bed.
Do you remember when your parents took us to the fair in Anapolis...they had a ferris wheel.....I remember we were riding it (you, your brother, me and Lenita), and it started raining, and we were happy because it was September and the first rain after the long dry season.
Do you remember that parrot that lived at our dorm....on my side of the dorm? I think her official name was Esther, but I think the official pronunciation was "Estuh", which I think is the way people from Livermore Falls, Maine/LaBelle, Florida/Vianopolis, Goias typically pronounce "Esther" That parrot loved to get loose, and then she would come flying at me at an altitude of about six inches (which is all her clipped wings would allow). I don't think she ever attacked you girls....I must have done something to really tick her off.
We're all praying for you, proud of you, thankful for your courage. May God give you tremendous rest. We all learned in speech class to picture people naked in order to be less nervous in front of a group. I don't think that was Jean Hann's class....I think that was probably at the University of Tennessee. Never mind. Maybe it would be more appropriate to think of us back there in Marcy's kitchen with Dona Conceicao washing three plates per second, snapping towels at each other other, trying to dry the dishes in time to get back for devotions to get our teeth brushed to get back to school by the second bell by 12:40.
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