In Praise Of Mexico, Lettuce And Billy Joel

by Kevin Burton

   On a tip from a new friend, I knocked on the door of Interlingua language school one day, and asked the good people there to employ me.

   Shockingly, they took me up on it.

   This was in the Reagan 80s. I was in somebody else’s country, Mexico, and somebody else’s field, education. So I had no business there. But one thing led to another and before you knew it, there I was in front of a class of Mexican nationals, teaching English.

   I did a decent job as long as I was there, which was not very long. I cared. But in one case, I led students astray.

   One of the class units called upon teachers to lead students in writing down the lyrics to a song in English. If you think that’s a soft, puffy assignment, you’re wrong.

   If you can decipher song lyrics in your second language, you’re doing quite well. Try it!  Many times I can’t understand lyrics in my first language. Including this time.

   The students were allowed to pick some of the songs we worked on, and they chose Whitney Houston songs they were quite familiar with and basically knew most of the words to already.

   But the teachers picked some of the songs. Among others, I picked “Stop In Nevada” by Billy Joel.

   Odd choice for sure.  Only Kev would come up with that one. But I chose in it part because I could teach some English idioms along with the song lyrics. For example in verse two, Joel sings  “She tried for years to be a good wife, It never quite got off the ground.”

   “To get off the ground”  in the sense of an airplane, in that case means  to begin or to get started.

   Good lesson. It’s the kind of thing you need to be able to pick up on if you’re going to function in the United States, which is what many of my students wanted to do. Not bad for a journalism major dabbling in teaching, huh?

    Except that…in the chorus, Joel sings, “And she left a little letter said she’s gonna’ make a stop in Nevada…”

   I thought Joel said “she left a little lettuce and she’s gonna make a stop in Nevada…”

   “Lettuce” of course, was another name for money, right?  Both are green., right?

    So I thought the woman in this song had felt bad for the guy she was dumping and left him some money, to tide him over during hard times.

   That’s what I thought and that’s what I taught and that’s what the students accepted. And we all moved on from there.

   It wasn’t until years later, for some reason I searched “Stop In Nevada” lyrics and read “left a little letter…”

   And I thought, oh those poor students!

   Before you jump all over me (maybe you are a parent of one of my students), Joel is from New York, and his “letter” came out “letta.”

  Then, the first consonant sound after letta was the S or soft C sound at the front of “said.”

    See how I got there?

   Come to think of it there is a lot of “letta” going on in pop music. It probably has less to do with Joel being from New York and more to do with the way it sings.

    R.B. Greaves in “Take A Letter, Maria”, The Box Tops in “The Letter”, both of those letters are lettas.  That R at the end of letter, gets in the way.

   Well in this case, that letta made me plant face first into a field of lettuce. 

   I read the real lyrics and doubted myself altogether. Maybe lettuce isn’t another word for money?

   Well yes, it is actually. Tomorrow in Page 7 you’ll be blessed with a list of words for money, including “lettuce.” But for now, a few tidbits to finish this story.

   It was pop music that let me know I was getting better at understanding Spanish. I had maybe 30 cassette tapes of Mexican music. At one point they were just a stream of syllables, to the rhythm of the boogie beat. Then gradually I began to understand them, and to realize love songs in Spanish are just as sappy as those in English.

   There are people in classrooms today teaching out and out lies, such as evolution. That’s a lot more damaging than confusing letters and lettuce. So I don’t feel so bad.

   Back in the day, when people told me how few people actually work in the field they studied in college, I recoiled. I said it was journalism for me, hell or high water.  I said the one thing I would never do was teach.

   Because of the grief I had given my teachers, I figured what goes around comes around and I didn’t want it to circle back on me.

   I have always said a good teacher is worth his or her weight in gold.  Maybe I was at least worth my weight in lettuce.