15 reasons why Spanish class is basically just therapy
1. “Dobby,” You tell your mom on the phone, laughing so hard you can barely get the words out. “When I speak Spanish, I sound like Dobby from Harry Potter.”
You’re late to class, again, but you’d gotten caught up telling your mom about how your teacher had placed you as a B2 level Spanish speaker. You’d googled what that sounded like, and the internet had said Dobby.
“My boyfriend is dating Dobby.” You tell her, howling, as you find it equal parts mortifying and hysterical.
You’re laughing so hard that you’re crying, until it turns into actual crying.
You tell your mom you have to go because Spanish class is about to start, and wipe away the tears as you ring the doorbell.
2. Your Spanish teacher was one of the first people to know when you and your boyfriend became official. Mainly because his role as Spanish teacher puts him in a position to ask debatably intrusive questions under the pretense of “Spanish practice.”
Your Spanish teacher knows a weird amount about your personal life.
He’d asked you how dating was going, and you’d responded with the word novio. Boyfriend.
“Novio?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Novio,” you said, turning pink. It’s one of the first times you’d used the word, and it’s still so new that you can’t say it without blushing. “Un Mexicano.”
From that day forward, your Spanish teacher brings up Mexico in every conversation.
He teaches you about famous Mexican singers and famous Mexican love songs. He teaches you Mexican slang and asks you when you’ll be having Mexican babies.
You tell him not to rush it.
3. Much to the dismay of your Spanish teacher, and every Mexican love song ever written, you find yourself on the verge of no longer having a Mexican boyfriend with awkward right-before-Valentine’s-Day timing.
You ask your Spanish teacher to help you write a Valentine’s Day card for someone that you’re on the cusp of breaking up with.
“Thanks for all the time together, I think you’re a good person,” you suggest. “But in Spanish, and better.”
Your Spanish teacher misses the whole about-to-break-up part, and compares your love for your boyfriend to the ocean — vast and expansive.
You take a deep breath and try again. Asking if he can take it from an 8, down to a 4.
He proves to be too Latin for the task.
You bring the card home and take out the rest of the metaphors.
4. “Tienes los ojos tristes, qué pasó?” You have sad eyes, what happened? He asks when he opens the door for Spanish class the following week.
You thought you’d done a really good job of hiding it. You’d checked your makeup beforehand, and had fake smiled and everything when you saw him.
“We broke up a few hours ago,” you say.
He spends the rest of class giving a TED Talk on relationships and the qualities that you deserve in a partner. Honestidad, empatía, respeto.
You're not sure if therapists are supposed to soapbox, but then you remind yourself that he is not your therapist and is instead your Spanish teacher.
5. You wonder why he can’t just be straight already, and then you can marry him and be done with this whole dating thing.
There is a mutual understanding that Mexico is now off-limits in Spanish class.
He no longer teaches you Mexican slang or incorporates Mexican love songs into your curriculum.
When a Mexican folktale comes up in one of your textbooks, he looks at you sheepishly and apologizes.
6. Somedays Spanish class is the only reason you put clothes on.
If it’s a good outfit, he compliments it. If it’s a bad one, he looks at you and says nothing, although his silence speaks volumes.
In your head, you know what he’s thinking, and it’s something along the lines of, “Are you ok?”
Occasionally when he opens the door you apologize, because it is laundry day in winter time and you are wearing the only clean clothes you own, which is a fur coat, running shoes, a beanie, and some rings.
You’re using a reusable grocery bag as a purse and manage to look simultaneously homeless, and like you belong on the runway.
7. You feel like you’re getting closer, because he has started to bitch about his other students to you.
You take pride in this.
You also wonder what he’s saying about you to his other students.
8. It feels like you’ve won a prize every time you make him laugh. You love making him laugh. You want to be his favorite.
You want to be your therapist’s favorite too.
“Not everyone has to love you, Danielle,” a voice in your head says.
You wonder what your therapist would say about this.
9. You are practicing past tense and your Spanish teacher asks you to recount one of your first memories. You know that he does not actually care and is just trying to teach you pretérito imperfecto, but it feels nice to be asked.
You tell him that you remember sitting on a bench with your dad on a hot summer evening as he explains to you that 10x10 is 100. And that 100x100 is 10000. Your four-year-old mind is blown.
The memory makes your eyes well up. You try not to cry, because you’re in Spanish class, and can you just stop crying at everything already?
After class is over, you sit in the sun on a bench across the street, and call your dad.
10. You pull up your notes app at the start of every session and ask your Spanish teacher about the words you’d heard between classes.
Sometimes it’s things you picked up in the coworking space, sometimes they’re words from your running group, usually it’s slang from chatting with guys on Bumble.
They’re words you’d smiled and laughed at in the moment, even though you’d had no idea what they meant. But you’re good at pretending. And you’re good at being wrong.
Then there’s the list of words that you don’t bring to Spanish class. They’re the ones you google on your own, because you’re pretty sure they aren’t things you’re supposed to admit to having learned.
Forro: argentinian slang for condom, Coger: argentinian slang for fucking, La concha de tu madre: argentinian slang for your mother’s cunt.
Granted, that last one you’d learned from being in the stands at a heated football game.
You’re in Argentina, every football game is a heated football game.
The longer you’re single, the longer the list gets. Being single has colored your Spanish.
11. Class is at the beginning of the week, so the conversation always opens by talking about the weekend. This usually means recounting details of any dates that you’ve been on.
At the moment there is both an Argentinian and a Venezuelan in the running. Your Spanish teacher, being Venezuelan, is rooting for the latter.
I’m sorry, you say, but the Argentinian is winning.
Give the Venezuelan another chance, he tells you, a few bad dates doesn’t mean anything.
12. He tells you that your Argentinian date’s name has demonic origins. He laughs, and says maybe not to mention it to your date.
You tell him not to worry, because in order to tell your date that would mean that you brought your date up during Spanish class, something that you definitely did not do. On account of how you are very cool and aloof, and do not ever think of your date outside of the time that you two are together. In fact sometimes you even forget his demonic-origin name, and what was it again?
You also have clearly never brought your date up during therapy either.
You have much more important things to talk about during therapy.
Much, much, more important things.
Obviously.
13. You start to ask your Spanish teacher for more Argentinian slang.
14. Your Spanish teacher starts to use the Argentinian in all of your examples.
15. “Pretend that you’re living together, and it turns out that he’s super messy and leaves his things all over the apartment. How would you use the imperative to tell him to pick his dirty socks up off the floor?”
“Good, now use the imperative to tell him to do his dishes, or you’re leaving.”
You remind your Spanish teacher that you are not in fact living together, and have only been on a few dates, and can he please slow things down.
He asks you about Argentinian babies.
You tell him not to rush it.
You're not sure if therapists are supposed to get this invested in your dating life. Except that you remind yourself that he is not actually your therapist, and is just your Spanish teacher and isn’t that easy to forget.