Sunday, August 28, 2022

Overheard at Booth 4: You Never Give Me Your Culture, You Only Give Me Your Funny 'Pressions

H: You guys never raised me to really respect my Latino culture.

M: What do you mean?  You ARE Latino!

H: Not culturally.  Like, you never spoke Spanish to me ...

M: I tried!  From kindergarten you never wanted to speak Spanish.  You only wanted to speak English.

H: But you never tried!  You're gonna let some five year old stop you from instilling culture.  All my other friends, they speak their parents native languages with them, and they also have big family gatherings with them.  Latinos are supposed to have big family gatherings.  We never had that!

P: Maybe 'cuz we live in Houston and the rest of the family lives in Tulsa, Vancouver, Chicago, and El Salvador?

H: You guys know what I mean! 

M: I cooked for you every day of your life.  That's culture.

H: But you never learned how to make PUPUSAS!

M:  And you think every Salvadoran woman needs to make pupusas?  I didn't raise you to be machista, mijo!

H: But it just would have been nice.

P: And there's more to Salvadoran food than just pupusas.  There's chilaquilas, sopa de res ...

M: Sopa de pollo, platanos con frijoles for breakfast.

H: Look, I just think you guys should have gotten me closer to my roots, OK?  Especially you, Mom, I can't expect Dad to give me any culture.  All White people do at family gatherings is talk about the weather and football.  But Latinos get together and talk about ... I dunno!  That's because we never had it.  We only ever had White People Culture, which is NO culture.

P: Listen son, White People have Culture.  We have the Culture of "If you don't like living here, there's the door ... and don't let it hitcha where the good Lord splitcha!"


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