Austin Carey
09/20/15
Eng 1010 Blah Blah Blah!!!!!! Have you ever been in that awkward situation where someone is talking to you, and all you hear is blah blah blah blah? Growing up having a friend from a different culture there was a lot of things going on that I couldn’t understand at a younger age. I meet my friend Johnathan at age of 5. We hung out together, ate together, went to school together pretty much did everything together, so it was almost like we were the same person. Even though me and my friend was like one we had a lot of difference. One of the biggest difference between us was he was part Spanish but you couldn’t tell by the complication of his skin color. I can remember the first day I went in his house, that day I was so nervous and had all eyes on me but all I could hear was blah blah blah. I was standing in my friend’s living room, with a gigantic grin on my face. Thinking to myself how funny his mom sounds, I bursted out a full goofy laugh. As the tears rolled down from my eyes from laughing so hard. I heard a distinct change in the tone of his mom's voice. Instantly Johnathan gets my attention and lets me know his mom is really upset right now. Me not knowing that there was different language I felt confused on why she would be so upset. My friend took me to his room, once we got in his room he explained to me that his mom didn’t speak English. Not knowing how disrespectful that was, his mother told her husband what I had done earlier in the day. With her husband being African American he understood both sides of the situation, I felt bad realizing laughing at her like that was real disrespectful. So me and Jonathan's dad had a talk and he just explained to me how that was disrespectful, to laugh at his wife but he also told me he felt where I was coming from. After the talk with his dad I apologized for being disrespectful. After my apology his dad had a long phone call which consisted of my friend’s dad explaining to my mom how disrespectful I had been for laughing in her face. He told her that he had a talk with me and that I understood my mistake. Having the type of mother that I had she set up a punishment for me. The punishment was for my friend’s mom to tutor me about the Hispanic culture. With my friend mom speaking only Spanish she needed her husband there to help translate to me. With the first tutor session we had, she taught me how to read Spanish, which took really long , but I caught on fast. The session took a total of three days. At the end of the three days I was reading Spanish, something I had never pictured before. Our second session involved writing in Spanish, which I found very fun. Learning how to write in Spanish was a rough, confusing and irritating. I caught on faster to writing in Spanish so that only took two days, which I really enjoyed doing. The last session of tutoring we had was the background of Hispanics. This was the best session out of all three, just getting to know how his mother grow up, what she had been through, and how much her culture meant to her. I gained to learn a lot of respect for their family and Hispanic culture. The whole time my friend mom was tutoring me he was there also working with me as if it wasn’t his culture, which the whole time was bringing us closer as friends. Back in the younger days most kids didn’t understand culture difference. With having being tutored I learned to respect other people culture and I understood that everyone had different way of seeing, reading, writing, and going on through life.