WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?

Faithful to my promise to be civilized and to keep my sense of humor, I will tell you a story of something that happened this week. I have a lady friend whose native language is French, and every time we encounter each other around the city we speak in French. To be honest, I try to keep the conversations short, but she seems to appreciate my effort to communicate with her. I know that if I ever go to a francophone country, I won’t have any problems surviving there because they like Latin American people.

We casually met at a bookstore and it was at the check out line where we saw each other. We greeted as usual. There was a woman next to her, who didn’t look anything like her, and later I found out she is here sister. Anyway, behind that woman there was a Hispanic friend of mine and I said hello in Spanish:  “Hola, como estas”.  To my surprise my friend’s sister thought I was talking to her in Spanish and started shouting at me:  “How dare you talk to me in Spanish, I am an American and you should speak English because you are in America”, (she repeated herself). As I looked at her in the eyes I saw anger and disapproval, but the funny thing was that she was mixing the languages, she was speaking “Frenchglish” or some kind of bullshit like that. I asked her: Who are you? Do I know you? As I noticed my friend’s face turning red of shame, she said “she is my sister”.  I said Oh, I’m sorry for you. Maybe she just came from Arizona, I don’t know.  California is a multicultural state with more than thirty languages and countless dialects are spoken here (according to the Census 2000), making it a real melting pot and one of the most powerful States in the world.

I am proud of my heritage and of being an American.  I abstained myself from insulting and putting that woman in her place, the way she deserved. I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings, she was already embarrassed enough. I wanted to tell her how this land was taken from Mexico but I know she wouldn’t care, since she was born in Canada.   I wanted to tell her that even though not every people speaking Spanish is from Mexico, we are getting the land back by buying one house at the time and sometimes two. I saw my friend again today and we no longer speak, what’s up with that?