It's a weird thing to teach these kids the songs I knew as a child, growing up on the south side of Chicago around 31st street. A neighborhood of Texas Hispanics who came north years ago to work in the Chicago Stockyards.  My mother was a school teacher, and I followed in her path.  Looking to take any assignment that would let me explore my family's past, I accepted a teaching position in an elementary school in Laredo, Texas.

As if that, alone, weren't sufficient reason for this dirge to play endlessly in my mind, teaching it to my kids really set the song on constant replay, and I kept finding myself humming the tune or singing the words nearly all the time.

On Monday night, a strange dream accompanied the tune as, exhausted, I was finally able to give into sleep.  

There I was traveling down the streets of Laredo...nuthin but a bottle of catsup named Clotsy and my good friend UnYun Rings, my golden brown, wire haired, Chihuahua. This time, I wasn't singing the streets of Laredo, I was entering a restaurant that promised authentic Mexican cuisine and American hamburguesas.  I ordered a hamburguesa and popped the lid off of Clotsy.  

"What the heck was that?"  I woke up wondering what food I'd eaten too close to bedtime and vowed to be more careful from now on.

The next night was the same. "Hamburguesa...hamburguesa." Night after night, for the rest of the week, I walked through the streets of Laredo until my faithful bottle of catsup and my dog came to the same restaurant, while "The Streets of Laredo" played like elevator music through the restaurant's music system.

On Friday afternoon, my friend Carol Lasky and I decided to go to dinner together and enjoy a movie afterward. We'd been friends since my arrival and she taught in the classroom next door to mine. We often spent our dateless weekends finding ways to amuse ourselves while she man hunted and I woman hunted.  After nearly a year, we were still our only company on the weekends.

"Did you know we have a new Tex-Mex restaurant in town?"  Carol asked, while we drove out of the teacher's parking lot. 

"Yeah?"

"Yeah? That's 'Yes, Miss Latsy'. What are you teaching your kids anyway?"

I told her about the dream, and other than forgetting to cross the street when the signal light turned green due to staring at me like I'd just grown fins, she tried not to react.  Instead, a few minutes later, Carol drove into the parking lot of a brand new restaurant that offered, "Traditional Tex-Mex Cuisine" and "American Hamburguesas".

I was flummoxed. I stared at the building like it was going to attack me.  Carol called my name to bring me back to myself, since I'd gone catatonic and my face had blanched from the surprise.

I reluctantly allowed Carol to pull me into the restaurant, where the greeter took our names and the number in our party. Standing next to her, a beautiful woman, not quite my height, with absolutely gorgeous blue-black hair, and brown eyes that I could drown in looked up at me.

I couldn't stop staring and I had no ability to speak since all the blood in my head rushed to nether places the moment she opened her luscious mouth to speak.

I dumbly followed her and Carol to the table.  She welcomed us to her new restaurant and offered to take our orders personally.  Carol ordered the chicken enchiladas, and I sat there not able to comprehend the menu since the words just blurred in my vision.

"You look like a hamburguesa kind of gal," she offered.  It was then I saw her name tag. Above her title, "Manager", it said, "Amber Geza".  "The Streets of Laredo" played softly in the background.  The entire restaurant had been designed with that theme in mind.

As it became apparent that I was listening to that music, Amber spoke.  "I learned that song in fifth grade. When I grew up, somehow I knew that one day I'd have my own place and I'd name it "Streets of Laredo". Even though it's a sad song, it does tug at your soul, doesn't it?"

With that, she was away delivering our orders to the kitchen staff.  A little while later, a server appeared with our dishes, my hamburger adorned with, of all things, Funyun Rings instead of onion rings.

Hamburguesa. 

Amber Geza.

When I dream, I really DREAM!

Lately, my dreams have taken a turn for the more...um, erotic. Which is fine, because the beautiful restaurant owner beside me likes the way they turn out.