Confessions of a Call Center Gal - By Lisa Lim Page 0,19

sexy. Slap a Scottish accent on a green ogre and I’ll immediately find him irresistible, case in point—Shrek.

I have an odd propensity for anything Scottish. I’ve always dreamed of living in the Scottish Highlands, speaking nothing but Gaelic, and listening to the sweet, harmonious music of Celtic Thunder.

As much as we love our shows, all we ever do every night is vegetate in front of the tube. We used to have so much more spunk. We’d stay up until two in the morning, chatting about everything and nothing. I kind of miss all that. Since we’ve started working at the call center, we don’t talk anymore. And frankly, after talking on the phones nonstop for eight hours straight, we’re just all talked-out.

My throat is sore, my voice is hoarse, and the last thing I want to do is chit chat.

Midway through the Late Late Show, Kars is snoring loudly on the sofa. I throw an Afghan over her and tuck in the corners. It tends to get chilly down here in Janis’ basement.

Stifling a yawn, I call it a night. After all, I have a student to tutor tomorrow.

Early next morning, I find myself wandering aimlessly around Idaho State U. I root around my bag, retrieve the campus map and study it. Okay, I need to locate the Eli M. Oboler Library.

“Are you lost?” a familiar voice pipes in from behind me.

I spin around. “Mika!” I cry joyously.

His face is flushed from the wind and he is smiling.

I smile back. “Good thing you found me. I had no clue where I was going.”

“Is this your first time on the ISU campus?”

“Uh-huh.” I scan the area. “Where did you come from? You appeared out of nowhere.”

“You see that brick building over there?” He gestures toward it and I nod, squinting in the sunlight. “That’s my dorm.”

I am momentarily surprised. “I had no idea you lived in the dorms.”

Good. That means he and Ingeborg don’t bunk together.

He nudges me playfully. “You ready to be my tutor today?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Lead the way my friend.”

He walks at a brisk pace and I try to match his stride.

“So, which dorm does Ingeborg live in?” I ask casually.

“She lives with her parents; her family moved from Bulgaria about a year ago.”

With some hesitation, I ask, “Um…so how long have you two been dating?”

“About six months now,” he says, walking at a fast clip.

I formulate over a dozen questions in my snoopy head, but before I can broach them, we’ve arrived at our destination.

Like a true gentleman, Mika holds the door open and I breeze in. We find a quiet spot in the back of the library and he wastes no time. Unzipping his backpack, he retrieves a stack of papers and slides it across the table. “Here you go. That’s all of it.”

Sifting through the pages, it dawns on me why Mika finds his ESL course so daunting. All his assignments cover the mechanics of grammar and writing: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections...Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

In order to become a good writer, one must be a good reader; they go hand in hand like ketchup and fries, like curry and naan, like macaroni and cheese. It is by reading that the mind absorbs the nuances of the language and how it is used.

My dad was a prolific author of numerous books and articles on architecture. To this day, I enjoy reading his work. He could turn a bland subject into a vivacious one by injecting his idiosyncratic humor, double entendres and playful puns.

Needless to say, he spurred my interest and fostered my love of writing. He made writing seem cool and consequently, I came to enjoy the thrill of crafting a story.

And he instilled the importance of reading in me from a very early age. Every weekend, he drove me over to the Book Stall on Chestnut Court and there, he let me go hare wild. It was such a thrill! I grabbed armfuls of books...Enid Blyton, E.B White and Nancy Drew when I was younger; and when I was slightly older, Agatha Christie. Detective Hercule Poirot taught me to become a better listener, to pay attention to what people aren’t directly saying. Crime novels aside, I got hooked on comics too, especially Betty and Veronica. That was my one guilty pleasure; I loved the entire Riverdale gang: Archie and Jughead, Big Ethel, Reggie, Midge, and even Moose.

My dad also immersed me in the works of Jane Austen, Emily Brontë and Charlotte Brontë.