“To go”.

Irregular verb (I think)

Present tense, first person singular:

“I go.”

Past tense:

“I goed” ?

No!!! Irregular verb!

“I went” ?

Yes!!!

Future Tense:

I shall go!!

Yes!!!

Some more complicated Verb tense form:

(maybe future plu- plus-perfect something…?)

“I shall have been gone for two hours by the time you will have arrived tomorrow at noon”

(What time did I leave?)

Mrs. Karlynsky,

my freshman year Russian language teacher,

might have spoken all of the above –

in English

or Russian or German

or even Yiddish, yet!

But she did not have the time.

It just wasn’t in her syllabus…

But,

You see,

I had never learned

the concept of conjugation …

or how to use that tool

to parse the ever fluid, ever logical

structure of language.

This was Bronx High School of Science,

you see…

All students arrived with that tool

already in their tool box!

(Along with solve for X.. 2 X 2 (3 -1) = X….)

Well, I didn’t have that hammer either.

So, of course,

I flunked out of BHSS

They were not into the remediation business….

Not into backwards….

Rather, Forward, EVER!!!

“Progress is our most important product!!

And into that church-run-high-school-in-Queens

into which I retreated to lick my wounds

and start over

sat Mr. Vilario Vinglas, an Estonian refugee

who spoke with a remarkably imitate-able accent

and taught Spanish and American History

and who introduced me to the mystery of

Voy, Vas, Va, Vamos, Vais, Van

and taught, sometimes in Spanish,

the significance of General George Washingtons decision

to not be King!

(King George the 3d of England had mused,

“I was not aware one might do that!”)

That question was one on Mr. Vinglas’s

combined Spanish 3 and US History

oral final exam.

The question,

written in Spanish on slips of paper

like in a fortune cookie

and placed into his fedora

and our answers, delivered in Spanish,

(a wise, time saving method that!)

combining two finals for which

he didn’t have to grade the papers.

I earned an A in both of them…

How different might my life have been

if Mr. Vinglas had walked into that

Bronx Science Russian Class

instead of Mrs. K,

said, “Stratsvicha Ucheniques!”

(forgive the spelling)

and asked us, maybe in German,

what our world would look like today,

if England and France

had imposed their will for Peace

and Confederate Cotton

on President Abraham Lincoln,

Vampire slayer!!

But he didn’t.

But I learned that

conjugal intelligence outcomes

and verb conjugations

expert an equal force on our lives,

gravitational,

just not at the same time….

So,

I go!

Adalente!

Si o No!