Juan of Words

Raising a Bilingual Kid: Skinny Jeans and Converse

Skinny jeans as Mens / Boys Fashion

I’d actually sworn I’d never let him wear them.  The way they fit ever-so-tightly around every single curve and crevice of the lower body, from the waist down to the feet, like wearing nothing more than little tights, or even worse, leaving almost nothing at all to the imagination.  Those skinny jeans… not manly at all!  

How can guys wear those things?  They look like girl jeans!  That’s just gross.

That’s what I always used to say, not that I really thought anything less of the guys inside of them – well not all of the time at least, and even then it was more of a chuckle of disbelief than anything else (no offense intended) – but they did strike me as an odd fashion trend for men from the beginning.  For boys not so much because, well, just think of all the crazy things we grew up wearing over the years.  But to come home from work one day and find Edgar in them was really not something I was prepared for.

Edgar:  Look, do you like my new jeans?

Me:  Are those skinny jeans!?

Edgar:  Yeah, they’re cool huh?

Me:  Where did you get those from!?

Edgar:  Grandma gave them to me!  Aren’t they cool!?

I looked confused, probably a little agitated too, my mouth wide open, just staring at him for a second, before all I could muster as a response was an uh-huh. Immediately after, my brain started to plot just how exactly I was going to get rid of those hideous jeans.  Only, it’s been weeks now, and I can’t bring myself to throw those skinny pants away… or tear them into shreds with my knife as I had planned.

The thing is whenever he’s strutting around, so confident and excited in his little jeans, which he likes to wear with converse shoes and a graphic tee, I can’t help but remember what it felt like for me to sag my pants way down below my waist and walk around all “cool” because I thought I was a little pachuco.  Hard to imagine, I know… but it was just a phase.  My parents couldn’t stand it and if they caught me with my pants all the way down there they’d always make it a point to yell at me pick up your pants! I haven’t started the yelling, but I’m hoping this is a phase too!

This is the second post in the Raising A Bilingual Kid series.  To read the original post in the series, just click on the link (Raising A Bilingual Kid: Ballet Folklórico)

The Witches Of Hidalgo County

Y el who, who, who...

For the longest, as adults, we’ve had the ongoing debate with my mother that the owls who used to surround our house in Hidalgo County were actually witches.  She says they aren’t and never were, but we all distinctly remember her calling them brujas when we were growing up in Edingburg, Texas.

They’d show up at night, very late usually, with their wretched crooning – who, who, who – and scare the living crap out of all of us.  We knew they were “evil,” choosing our house out of all the open space and tree branches outside to sit on every night and hold their nightly rituals… which felt went on for hours. In all honesty, I don’t remember how long they’d been using the roof of our little cream-colored home with brown trimming for their chanting before my mother got fed up, but the night she confronted them I will never forget.

Like a mad woman, no insult intended, she swung our flimsy little screen door open with one hand.  It ricocheted back and forth for a while, at first making a heart-stopping crash heard round our house, which immediately called us all to attention onto the foot-and-a-half-tall cement patio in our back yard to see what all the fuss was about.  With a gallon of holy water in one hand, a rosary in the other, walking so fast it felt like she was sprinting, there she went, repeating over and over in loud speak Ave Marias and Padres Nuestros, throwing handfuls of holy water onto the roof, while the brujas on top chanted louder and louder every time.

“Mom was possessed,” I shivered within myself, my legs trembling uncontrollably, my little eight year old heart pounding as fast as it could, wondering what in the world she was doing.

My mother was performing an exorcism, or something very similar to it in our back yard!   It was the only explanation!  Their confrontation went on for several terrifying minutes: the yelling and the crooning, the yelling and the crooning, the yelling and the crooning… who, who, who… WHO! WHO! WHO! Until all of a sudden, in one tic of the clock, they were gone.  Silence is all we heard and none of us said anything.  The yelling we kids had been doing, gone with the brujas.

Never again did they show up at our home in Hidalgo County!

Now when we ask mom about it she laughs and shakes her head, yo no sé si eran brujas o no…

We’ll press her, then why did you call them ‘brujas’?

Finally she’ll give in, pues allá en el rancho yo oía la gente decir que los tecolotes eran brujas, pero yo no sé si sea cierto…

Personally I really do believe they are, and to this day I am completely terrified by their existence, not to mention their horrible who’s. We don’t see or hear them often here in Houston, and that to me is one of the best things about not living in the country.

What do you think brujas or just my traumatized imagination?

Conversaciones Con Mi Hermano Over Banana Splits

Low Ri-der!

He was Yin and I was Yang.  Since we were kids, it’s always been that way.  Just a whole 15 months apart, my older brother and I have always been polar opposites.  He, my father’s right hand, at his side pretty much from the very beginning. Me, always preferring the warmth of my mother’s comfort.

When apa would ask who wants to come to work with me today?, or ama would insist he take one of us with him to teach us the “real value of hard work,” he’d jump at the opportunity, I’d run and hide so I wouldn’t have to go.  The few times we did end up going together, Chuy was all energy and will – what do I do now apa? show me how to do it, let me try – I, on the other hand,  was more hands off.  Sitting on the wayside mostly, trying to stay cool, away from the sun, playing with whatever rocks and sticks I could find.

At home with mom, I had all the freedom in the world to make-believe and play in my imaginary world outside.  We were in the country so nature was my playground.

Over the years, though, we did begin to bond a lot more.  Probably more than anything because we were accomplices – I’d say there weren’t more than a handful of travesuras that he did without me, or I did without him.  We worked well together.  He was the mastermind.  I was the sidekick.  Like Batman and Robin, Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, or any other of the cartoon characters we grew up with.  Despite our differences our shared mischievousness brought us together.

Chuy taught me how to shoplift, how to skip, how to play cool, how to look hard, and how not to let anybody punk me.  Though I struggled with the latter through most of my middle school years anyway.  People knew he was my brother and I knew if it came down to it he’d always be willing to stick up for me, so we were cool.  Until we hit our teenage years.  Then once again he was the cool one… me just the nerdy younger brother.  “To each his own,” we thought, hardly ever meddling in the other’s business, except for when it came to girls.

That was the universal language we both spoke.  The one we could stay up hours talking about, joking about… him giving me tips on how to win over my crushes, although they hardly ever worked.  Chuy was always a lot smoother with the ladies than I was.

Outside of that, he’d take me to school and bring me back home in his low-rider-looking Chevy every day, but that was that.  He had his own friends.  I had mine.  Still, every once in a while, usually late at night in the summers, when it was particularly humid and hot, he’d come in and say hey, you want to go to Dairy Queen? To which I’d reply yeah.  We’d get in that car, which also had hydraulics – it was a shiny maroon color with custom rims and very low-riding tires that every once in a while he’d jump up and down for our amusement, and ride all the way to the fast food ice cream spot a good 15 minutes away from our house.  We’d order a couple of banana splits and just sit there talking about everything and anything.

I learned more about my brother in those conversations than during any other of our convivencias throughout the years.  In that low-rider I came to respect him, to admire him, and to look up to him.

I think, even if just a little, he learned to do the same for me.