As I was growing up I had two different cultures to learn about. Well really three. My Latin roots, American, and Native American was well. But the main one was Latin. From summer visits to mexico. To grandparents and relatives visiting in the states, I was surrounded by my culture. When I was spoken to I was lost in translation unless it was easy words like comer, bano, or haces colour. Other than that, I was lost and knew nothing of what they were trying to tell me. For all I knew the house could of been on fire and I would not know. Well my father did not know english too well and relied on us kids to help him pick it up. His common words that he used were "no, yes, estop, bathroom, beer, and food." I was 10 and I knew more words in english than him.
He was studying the citizenship test to become a full American citizen. I remember that my mother told my sister and I to tell the difference between words to our father. Words like they, their, are, ours, but, and butt. I started with the words but and butt. My sister and I started to giggle about the word butt. I played a mean trick on my father. I told him the word butt was "except for the fact" instead of it being his rear-end. The sentence I used, "He would of went to the store, butt he left his money at home." I giggled so hard to hear my father repeat the words that just came out of my mouth. Butt, Butt, Butt. I laughed and laughed. My father started to laugh as well. Than our mother walked in to hear the sentence. Again our father repeated the words. We both looked at our mother, she shook her head knowing what we have told our father the word meaning of the word.... We both got sent to our room and spanked later that evening by our father. The sentence I remember his telling me was "I'm going to beat your butt!!"
