Fridays were always the worst days for me when I was just a little boy. Out of all the memories I have stored up in this melon I like to call my head, Fridays were the least of my favorites. On Friday mornings, my father would wake me up especially early to take me to my grandparents’. He would sit up and down on the waterbed shaking it ferociously so when I awoke I thought that I had woken up to an earthquake. He would then carry me to the car still in my pajamas with sleep still caked in my eyes. The hand off was done so slick; just like every other day he took me to my grandparents’. He carried me inside and planted me down on my grandpa’s favorite fake leather recliner. He would then tell me that he was going to get a cup of coffee, and then he would sneak out the back of the house. This was the routine everyday, but on Fridays he never came back to pick me up after work. I was stuck at my grandparents’ house all day.

The mornings were usually the hardest. After an hour or so of crying and screaming as if I had just lost another parent, my grandma would calm me down and make something to eat, what I had come to know as an authentic Mexican breakfast of scrambled eggs and hot dog weenies. After eating, she would take me back to my grandpa’s recliner and turn on the television. My morning shows were coming on, three hours of uninterrupted pleasure for me as well as my grandma. The first of the three shows were Hey You Guys, and then followed by my favorite show Sesame Street, and bringing up the rear was the Reading Rainbow. The Reading Rainbow and Hey You Guys, I just watched to waste time, but when Sesame Street was on, I got really involved, from the opening theme song to the closing credits. I would sing so loud sometimes that my grandma would scream in Spanish from the kitchen to shut up, “Cierra la boca!”

Sesame Street offered a little bit of everything a kid needed to help propel them forward in life. On Fridays my favorite characters, which were the Cookie Monster and Count Dracula, had their own little segment of spelling and counting. Every time the Count would speak, he would say, “Repeat after me, one cookie, two cookie, three cookie.” Before he got to the fourth cookie, the Cookie Monster had eaten the first three, and the count would have to start all over again. Then the Cookie Monster would sing songs with different letters of the alphabet and when he got to the letter “C” he would sing, “C is for cookie and that’s good enough for me. Every other letter represented a different flavor or shape of a cookie; “A, is for apple flavored cookies and B, is for banana flavored cookies, and D is for diamond shaped cookies.” By the end of first segment, I knew how to count to five, I knew my alphabets from A through F, and I knew some colors and shapes. When Bert and Ernie came on, I knew the importance of hygiene, and how to keep clean. Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus were best friends, and it seemed that there was always something wrong with Mr. Snuffleupagus. Big Bird was always trying to find the cause of his best friend’s problems, and to make him feel better about himself. Oscar the Grouch was a dirty, green, moody puppet that lived in a trashcan right outside of Big Bird’s house. Because he was always moody and grouchy, he reminded me of my grandpa and how he would act from time to time when he was home. I would catch myself day dreaming sometimes about living on Sesame Street when I got older. Having a giant yellow bird and a wooly mammoth for neighbors would be kind of cool.

Trying to pry myself off the recliner would be difficult; after a couple of hours of sitting, I became one with the recliner. From another view point, one would say that I looked like a mouse stuck on a sticky trap, struggling to break free from its inevitable death. From the living room, I smelled the aromas of authentic Mexican cuisine again billowing out from the kitchen. My grandma was making her specialty; rice, beans, and spam for lunch. She called out from the kitchen and asked if I was hungry, “Mijo, tiene hambre?” She called out a couple of more times before she peeked down the hallway, and saw that I was stuck. It took most of her strength to pull me away from the recliner’s death grip. The sound that my skin made as I was being pulled away from the recliner was of paper being torn into pieces. The sensation stung my skin, and I began to cry a little. Every day I sat on that recliner and every day my grandma pulled me away. After numerous times of being pulled from the recliner, I would think that I would learn a lesson, but I never did.

My grandpa came home every day for lunch, but on Fridays he usually stayed home and didn’t go back to work. After lunch he would go to the backyard and take care of the garden he made so many years back. If I was lucky I would get to go back into the living room, and watch more television; that day, I was not. He grabbed me by the hand and said, “Vamanos, we’re going to do some jard work,” his English needed some improvement, but I was too scared to correct him. I threw a tantrum that was quickly extinguished just by one look from my grandpa. I knew there was no point arguing. If I did, my grandpa would just put a belt to my backside, and I would still have to go outside anyway. While outside my grandfather would pick me up and educate me in the different types of citrus trees he had; oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and tangerines.

“I hate tangerines,” I proclaimed loudly.

“Y yo tambien,” my grandpa replied, “Dey have mucho semillas.”

He would then put me down and let me run around while he chased me with the watering bucket, like one of the last scenes from the Godfather movie. We spent a couple of hours outside before we went back in the house where my grandma had some ice tea ready for us. “Go back to da libing room and wash la tele,” my grandpa would say. Before thinking twice, I was already running down the hallway.

Running in the house wasn’t always a wise decision. Not because it bothered my grandparents, but because of the dull green shag carpeting that lay upon the entire house. Sometimes if I wasn’t careful, the carpet would reach up and bring me down right on my face. This was one of those times. Watching the whole event from the kitchen, my grandpa started laughing loudly; it was the kind of laugh where one would like to join in even if one didn’t know what one was laughing at. His laugh was so loud and boisterous, that I started laughing as well. “Levanto my hijo,” my grandpa said, “Why you lying in da hall? La tele is in da libing room.” I got up without crying and walked the rest of the distance to the living room. Once again I climbed up on the recliner, and shut my eyes just for a little bit.

The overwhelming odor of my grandpa’s generic form of Ben Gay woke me from my slumber. He had removed me from the recliner and had placed me on the sofa. The day had turned into night without my notice, and the digital clock that sat on top of the old International Radio box read 7:30. This was why Friday’s were difficult for me. Usually my dad had picked me up about this time. On Fridays he coached football for the local high school, and I had to stay the night at my grandparents. No matter how well the day had gone with my grandparents, if my father was not there to pick me up, I was going to throw one hell of a fit. My grandparents expected it many times before, and no matter how they tried to cushion the situation, they knew that they were in for at least one hour of screaming and crying. It was my grandpa that comforted me the most out of these situations; maybe just the sound of his voice was all that was needed. “Mirar a mi hijo. Todo va a estar bien,” my grandpa would say in Spanish that everything is going to be okay. “Cuando te levantas por la manana, estara con su papa,” he says, when I wake up in the morning, I will be with my father. Just to hear my grandpa say those words was all I needed to stop crying. For the remainder of the night, I would sit next to Oscar the Grouch and we watched replays of old boxing matches until I fell asleep on his lap, and just as he told me the night before, I would wake up in my room at my house. As if the whole day before was just a dream.