How to go from Peruvian to Chilean in 60 seconds (long)
And now ladies and gentlemen of LJ I present to you...a real update!
Today we're going to talk about my mom again. I've written about her and her zany antics before, but for my newly added friends, a quick recap:
She is from Peru. And she's a lunatic.
Not lunatic in a Mother Dearest way (although I wish she was so I could have a gripping tell-all book to push on you guys), but lunatic in a Betty White/Golden Girls way.
You see, my mom is from old skool South America, Peru in fact, where her family lived on a ranch--father, mother, 8 girls, 2 boys--and everyone worked from sunup to sundown. Real salt of the earth kind of people living a simple life with simple beliefs.
Some of these beliefs were invested in preposterous myths and superstitions and no amount of common sense would dispel them. Believe me, I've tried. Now compound this fact with the fact that my mom's English is "no so good" (despite endless night classes in English and English spelling) and you have given her the power to transform commonplace occurances into the utterly ridiculous.
All without her being aware of it.
Like the time she rode with me to the bank. We rolled up to the drive-thru teller window and after conducting my transactions, I thanked the teller and drove off. My mother sat in stone silence all the way home. If you knew my mother, you would know something was verily amiss as the woman is a champion talker.
She has a phobia of comfortable silences and does her best to fill them with announcements, questions, commentary, insults, loud rummagings through her purse, whatever she can think of to place a sound barrier between herself and peace and quiet.
For the first time in my history of driving I was able to listen to entire songs while riding with my mother in my truck. I knew instantly something was wrong. I asked just that.
"What's wrong, mom?"
*silence*
"Mom? What's wrong?"
*heavy sighing, more silence*
"Mother! Talk to me!" (what am i doing? shut up! enjoy the silence!)
She sighed again, folded her hands, turned to me, and with a disapproving frown, announced, "I can no beleeb how rude you were to dat poor woman at de bank."
Jigga what? Rude? I quickly recapped the brief conversation in my head and couldn't for the life of me justify what my mother could've been thinking. I greeted the teller, please and thank you'd her, then wished her a good day. Where did my mother get rude from? Not surprisingly, "Huh?" was the only appropriate reply in this instance.
"I did not come to dis cahn-try to raise rude girls. But today? Jess, today, you were SO rude!"
"Huh?" I puzzled again. This was turning out to be a long day.
"Can no beleeb it. Telling her to get lost..."
"WHAT! I DID NOT!" There, that was better. Now I was forming complete sentences again.
"JESS YOU DID! YOU SAID TANK YOU, GET LOST! I AM IN DIS CAR WITH YOU, DID YOU FORGET?!"
I had to pull over for the laughing. And looking at her outraged face with her hands clenched into fists--The Fists of Indignation know no forgiveness--just made me laugh harder.
Thoroughly put out that I had the gall to laugh at her, my mother did the one thing that could stop my guffaws since childhood: she pinched the underside of my arm.
"OW!"
"GOOD!"
"Mom, I didn't tell that lady to get lost."
"Jess you did!"
"No, I didn't! I said 'Thank you, Lois'! The lady's name was Lois!"
This stopped my mother cold. The frown turned into confusion. The confusion turned into an embarrassed laugh. The embarrassed laugh turned back to confusion again when she realized that "get lost" didn't really rhyme with "Lois."
Remember I mentioned her superstitions and wacked-out beliefs? Just recently she called me with concerns about the fact that I have two cats. Now seeing as I've had these cats for 4 years without a single word for or against, I found it rather odd she would pick now to say anything. I asked her to explain to me her concerns.
Turns out she had been talking with one of her Cuban friends Lillian and Lillian told my mom that a friend who read a Cuban article about it told HER that having cats around children would not only steal their breaths when they slept, but cause them to grow cat hair all over their bodies.
It took me a full 30 seconds to even process what she just said. When I still didn't answer, she demanded to know if I heard her. Woman! You just told me my cats were voodoo warlocks who would somehow possess the body of my son, that's not something I'm NOT going to hear!
When I was able to speak again in a normal voice, I told her to stop listening to Lillian.
She insisted Lillian knew what she was talking about because she had heard of it happening to another friend and Lillian wouldn't lie to her.
I in turn insisted she stop calling me with this crazy as I had housework to do.
She became huffy.
I told her even if it were true, I was pretty sure a 17 year old teenager could take on two 8 lb cats.
At that, she curtly announced she had to go, and hung up.
My mother lives two blocks from me. Even so, she feels I don't quite visit her enough so she invents illnesses to freak me out and cause me to drive erratically to her house. Today was such a day.
She calls me in tears to "Come over! Come over now! Dios mio, I'm going to coe-LAPST!"
So of course I don't even bother throwing shoes on and run out in my socks and race over to her house. I burst through the door to find her on the couch calmly watching the Spanish channel.
Out of breath and thoroughly scared, I'm standing there looking her over from head to toe to try to find blood or broken bones or the creeping death or something to warrant her phone call. I shout at her to tell me what happened.
Not taking her eyes off the television, she serenely held her hand out and said, "Tell me if dis is cancer." The thought that 1.) I wasn't a licensed radiologist and 2.) I wouldn't know cancer if it came up and ate half my face away never crossed my mind as I grabbed her hand and saw...a wart.
Remember I mentioned earlier that she was from Peru? One night a few months ago my family were all gathered at a Peruvian restaurant to celebrate my mother's birthday, about 18 of us. I sat on the right hand side of her, my sister on her left.
We're all having a grand time drinking Peruvian margaritas, talking about birthday parties past, laughing, insulting each other, all that jazz, when suddenly our waitress introduces herself and compliments my eyes, musing that she didn't know many Peruvians with green eyes. My mom chose that moment to drop the biggest bombshell of my life: "Oh, we're not Peruvian. We're Chilean."
My sister and I dropped our drinks simultaneously.
The story is that my grandfather and grandmother got tired of Chile, pulled up stakes and llamas and moved the whole kit-n-kaboodle to Peru. I went my entire life believing myself to be half-Peruvian. I've got Peruvian artifacts in my house. I've even got this huge frickin' llama fur rug tacked up on my living room wall. I go my whole life bearing Peruvian pride only to discover...I'm not? WTF! I almost felt like I was being told I was adopted.
My sister and I were understandably upset. How could we go so many years without a single family member telling us? The answer, according to my mom, is simple: "Eh. It was just easier to say we were Peruvian instead of 'splaining de whole story." The whole...she's lost her damn mind. What "whole story"? All she had to say was they were Chileans who moved to Peru! Simple!
Ah, but there is no such thing as simple when it comes to my mother. She could turn one sentence into a two hour story, that woman, so I guess in a couple of years when I get over my cataclysmic shock, I'll understand why she didn't bother.
Telling you. Insane, she is.
Nevertheless, I do have to thank her for raising me up to be a poor liar. The reason for this is that I rarely had to lie to my mom--she didn't understand half the things I told her anyway so I lost nothing in telling her the truth. (It's one of the many advantages of growing up with a foreign mother and I strongly recommend it.)
For instance, I could craft plans for an illicit rendezvous with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks without fear of punishment:
"Mom! I'm going out for a little while! Me and Bobby the Car Thief are going to make out on the bleachers at the football game!" and she would reply "Ok! Wear a sweater 'cause ees cold!" because she didn't know what the words "thief" and "make out" meant.
She also doesn't recognize marijuana (as was first reported in my Christmas post) so my cousins are at liberty to smoke the ganja hassle-free on her front patio. She actually encourages this because she thinks smoking "nice tobacco" in a pipe is more debonair than cigarettes. It doesn't get much more awesome than that, cherubs.
Many advantages. I swear if there was a market for mail order mothers, I'd build an empire.
Today we're going to talk about my mom again. I've written about her and her zany antics before, but for my newly added friends, a quick recap:
She is from Peru. And she's a lunatic.
Not lunatic in a Mother Dearest way (although I wish she was so I could have a gripping tell-all book to push on you guys), but lunatic in a Betty White/Golden Girls way.
You see, my mom is from old skool South America, Peru in fact, where her family lived on a ranch--father, mother, 8 girls, 2 boys--and everyone worked from sunup to sundown. Real salt of the earth kind of people living a simple life with simple beliefs.
Some of these beliefs were invested in preposterous myths and superstitions and no amount of common sense would dispel them. Believe me, I've tried. Now compound this fact with the fact that my mom's English is "no so good" (despite endless night classes in English and English spelling) and you have given her the power to transform commonplace occurances into the utterly ridiculous.
All without her being aware of it.
Like the time she rode with me to the bank. We rolled up to the drive-thru teller window and after conducting my transactions, I thanked the teller and drove off. My mother sat in stone silence all the way home. If you knew my mother, you would know something was verily amiss as the woman is a champion talker.
She has a phobia of comfortable silences and does her best to fill them with announcements, questions, commentary, insults, loud rummagings through her purse, whatever she can think of to place a sound barrier between herself and peace and quiet.
For the first time in my history of driving I was able to listen to entire songs while riding with my mother in my truck. I knew instantly something was wrong. I asked just that.
"What's wrong, mom?"
*silence*
"Mom? What's wrong?"
*heavy sighing, more silence*
"Mother! Talk to me!" (what am i doing? shut up! enjoy the silence!)
She sighed again, folded her hands, turned to me, and with a disapproving frown, announced, "I can no beleeb how rude you were to dat poor woman at de bank."
Jigga what? Rude? I quickly recapped the brief conversation in my head and couldn't for the life of me justify what my mother could've been thinking. I greeted the teller, please and thank you'd her, then wished her a good day. Where did my mother get rude from? Not surprisingly, "Huh?" was the only appropriate reply in this instance.
"I did not come to dis cahn-try to raise rude girls. But today? Jess, today, you were SO rude!"
"Huh?" I puzzled again. This was turning out to be a long day.
"Can no beleeb it. Telling her to get lost..."
"WHAT! I DID NOT!" There, that was better. Now I was forming complete sentences again.
"JESS YOU DID! YOU SAID TANK YOU, GET LOST! I AM IN DIS CAR WITH YOU, DID YOU FORGET?!"
I had to pull over for the laughing. And looking at her outraged face with her hands clenched into fists--The Fists of Indignation know no forgiveness--just made me laugh harder.
Thoroughly put out that I had the gall to laugh at her, my mother did the one thing that could stop my guffaws since childhood: she pinched the underside of my arm.
"OW!"
"GOOD!"
"Mom, I didn't tell that lady to get lost."
"Jess you did!"
"No, I didn't! I said 'Thank you, Lois'! The lady's name was Lois!"
This stopped my mother cold. The frown turned into confusion. The confusion turned into an embarrassed laugh. The embarrassed laugh turned back to confusion again when she realized that "get lost" didn't really rhyme with "Lois."
Remember I mentioned her superstitions and wacked-out beliefs? Just recently she called me with concerns about the fact that I have two cats. Now seeing as I've had these cats for 4 years without a single word for or against, I found it rather odd she would pick now to say anything. I asked her to explain to me her concerns.
Turns out she had been talking with one of her Cuban friends Lillian and Lillian told my mom that a friend who read a Cuban article about it told HER that having cats around children would not only steal their breaths when they slept, but cause them to grow cat hair all over their bodies.
It took me a full 30 seconds to even process what she just said. When I still didn't answer, she demanded to know if I heard her. Woman! You just told me my cats were voodoo warlocks who would somehow possess the body of my son, that's not something I'm NOT going to hear!
When I was able to speak again in a normal voice, I told her to stop listening to Lillian.
She insisted Lillian knew what she was talking about because she had heard of it happening to another friend and Lillian wouldn't lie to her.
I in turn insisted she stop calling me with this crazy as I had housework to do.
She became huffy.
I told her even if it were true, I was pretty sure a 17 year old teenager could take on two 8 lb cats.
At that, she curtly announced she had to go, and hung up.
My mother lives two blocks from me. Even so, she feels I don't quite visit her enough so she invents illnesses to freak me out and cause me to drive erratically to her house. Today was such a day.
She calls me in tears to "Come over! Come over now! Dios mio, I'm going to coe-LAPST!"
So of course I don't even bother throwing shoes on and run out in my socks and race over to her house. I burst through the door to find her on the couch calmly watching the Spanish channel.
Out of breath and thoroughly scared, I'm standing there looking her over from head to toe to try to find blood or broken bones or the creeping death or something to warrant her phone call. I shout at her to tell me what happened.
Not taking her eyes off the television, she serenely held her hand out and said, "Tell me if dis is cancer." The thought that 1.) I wasn't a licensed radiologist and 2.) I wouldn't know cancer if it came up and ate half my face away never crossed my mind as I grabbed her hand and saw...a wart.
Remember I mentioned earlier that she was from Peru? One night a few months ago my family were all gathered at a Peruvian restaurant to celebrate my mother's birthday, about 18 of us. I sat on the right hand side of her, my sister on her left.
We're all having a grand time drinking Peruvian margaritas, talking about birthday parties past, laughing, insulting each other, all that jazz, when suddenly our waitress introduces herself and compliments my eyes, musing that she didn't know many Peruvians with green eyes. My mom chose that moment to drop the biggest bombshell of my life: "Oh, we're not Peruvian. We're Chilean."
My sister and I dropped our drinks simultaneously.
The story is that my grandfather and grandmother got tired of Chile, pulled up stakes and llamas and moved the whole kit-n-kaboodle to Peru. I went my entire life believing myself to be half-Peruvian. I've got Peruvian artifacts in my house. I've even got this huge frickin' llama fur rug tacked up on my living room wall. I go my whole life bearing Peruvian pride only to discover...I'm not? WTF! I almost felt like I was being told I was adopted.
My sister and I were understandably upset. How could we go so many years without a single family member telling us? The answer, according to my mom, is simple: "Eh. It was just easier to say we were Peruvian instead of 'splaining de whole story." The whole...she's lost her damn mind. What "whole story"? All she had to say was they were Chileans who moved to Peru! Simple!
Ah, but there is no such thing as simple when it comes to my mother. She could turn one sentence into a two hour story, that woman, so I guess in a couple of years when I get over my cataclysmic shock, I'll understand why she didn't bother.
Telling you. Insane, she is.
Nevertheless, I do have to thank her for raising me up to be a poor liar. The reason for this is that I rarely had to lie to my mom--she didn't understand half the things I told her anyway so I lost nothing in telling her the truth. (It's one of the many advantages of growing up with a foreign mother and I strongly recommend it.)
For instance, I could craft plans for an illicit rendezvous with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks without fear of punishment:
"Mom! I'm going out for a little while! Me and Bobby the Car Thief are going to make out on the bleachers at the football game!" and she would reply "Ok! Wear a sweater 'cause ees cold!" because she didn't know what the words "thief" and "make out" meant.
She also doesn't recognize marijuana (as was first reported in my Christmas post) so my cousins are at liberty to smoke the ganja hassle-free on her front patio. She actually encourages this because she thinks smoking "nice tobacco" in a pipe is more debonair than cigarettes. It doesn't get much more awesome than that, cherubs.
Many advantages. I swear if there was a market for mail order mothers, I'd build an empire.