Marcos had tried hard to appear confident and not show that he was terrified—but he was, and very much so. As the week of the exam approached, his nerves only grew worse.
During the final weeks, we barely saw him. He’d show up briefly on Saturdays, but the rest of the week, he was nowhere to be found. As mentioned in earlier entries, Marcos had enrolled in a well-known academy to prepare for both the physical and theoretical parts of the exam. However, as he told us, he mostly went to have a laugh. And knowing Marcos, he might have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t much of a liar.
In the final week, I met up with him at the library, thinking he might actually do something productive—or so I thought. Instead, he spent the entire time whispering comments about every woman who walked by: “Look at the curves on that one,” “If she stands up, I’ll show her,” “That girl with the glasses is totally provoking me.” He was practically putting into practice everything his lovely uncle (the taxi driver/fascist/homophobe/racist) had taught him.
At first, I admit it was funny—I couldn’t stop laughing for a while. But I was pretty busy trying to get through my Chemistry exercises, and after a while, it just felt like wasting time. Still, I have to say, spending time with Marcos was always fun. He might have had his flaws, but he could make you laugh like no one else. That said, I wouldn’t recommend doing this too often if you value your grades. After that day, I never went to the library with him alone again—for that reason and one other thing I’ll explain shortly.
To become a paratrooper (yes, paratrooper, Sandra, although in reality, he was aiming to be a basic soldier and work his way up from there), Marcos could’ve probably passed the physical tests. But no—he was stopped by the theoretical part. And the test that crushed his dream of being a soldier was…a spelling exam.
Marcos insisted they had designed the test to trip people up. But the truth was, he hadn’t opened a single book. And so, Marcos’s dream of joining the military came to an abrupt end. That was Marcos for you.
His uncle tried to convince him to give it another shot, but Marcos never did the same thing twice. And so, his dream of "Everything for the Homeland" came to an end.
To be continued.
