No English no McDonalds

I hated that school. I hated the nuns, my classmates, the Padre Nuestro recited before every class.

Catechism felt like an unbearable purgatory—a spiral of hollow reflections that numbed my mind.

Miss Pilar, young and beautiful, sat me in a strange chair and abused her position as director to mock me.

Every day, I walked the halls and patios of Montini with those kids—rich, but not rich enough—while my brown skin stood out against their whiteness.

Every day, I faced a cesspool of fake smiles from pretentious families. The pretty girls ignored me, and I, a boy who drew silly pictures just to make friends, was left behind.

There was a teacher—one whose words scarred me—who told me I was uglier than someone wearing a hideous Halloween mask.

I wanted to cry, to escape, but when I got home, I found no refuge, no solitude, only a house full of people. I wanted to be alone. Alone. Forever alone.

I never fit within those glass palace walls, never understood the rules of their competitive games. I wanted to be left alone, yet I longed to be included. To join the other kids, my classmates, for a trip to McDonald’s.

I repeated first grade. The autism stigma was stamped on me by Pilar and the self-proclaimed “wise” teachers who flaunted their academic titles like badges of honor, all under the watchful gaze of the Virgin Mary and a Catholic crucifix.

English class began, but I was too shy to speak. I wanted to, desperately. Yet my mind was elsewhere, trapped in flashbacks of a grandmother who had done unspeakable things to me. My mind wasn’t mine anymore.

Still, I yearned for that McDonald’s trip. Our young English teacher had a reward system: students with good grades and a star on their foreheads were invited to eat a Happy Meal. A simple meal, but to me, it was something magical—something I craved, not just for the food, but for the fleeting comfort it symbolized.

But the teacher ridiculed me. Just like my sister later ridiculed my English. Just like so many others mocked my pronunciation. I wanted to go to McDonald’s. I wanted to be alone. Alone. To satiate the hunger of my soul.

I hated that school. I hated the nuns, my classmates, the Padre Nuestro recited before every class.

My tears wrote silent words on the floor. My knees buckled under the weight of my perceived stupidity. My fingers, the only part of me brave enough to speak when my voice couldn’t, embraced the language of ridicule.

And so, my hands began to cry. My voice found its song. My eyes sought refuge in books. My ears opened themselves to English, yearning for a day when I could finally reach those golden arches—the ones denied to me, the ones I thought I didn’t deserve.

Because they called me stupid.

But I would show them.

With a lighted heart, I finally grasped the Golden Arches—through words no one ever believed I could speak.