Culture Clash
My aunt and uncle came to the American Southwest on holiday. They were well-meaning corn-fed Protestant Midwesterners adrift in a semi-foreign land.

While in New Mexico, my aunt and uncle visited my mostly Spanish-speaking grandmother, who had a sign warning 'None but Catholic propaganda permitted in this home.' So, if religion was a bad topic of conversation, and if the conversation would be in broken English anyway, what would anyone talk about?

My aunt and uncle decided that, despite the many profound differences between them, they all had something in common...they were all old! My uncle put his arm around my grandmother's shoulder and proclaimed 'we are all senior citizens, together!'

My grandmother was startled by the sudden embrace. Looking at my uncle's bare legs, exposed by his tourist shorts, and the over-eager smile on my aunt's face, my grandmother decided that these two strangers were trying to entice her into a menage a trois.

First, my grandmother was ashamed that these two 'swingers' were regrettably part of her extended family. Then she exploded in sarcastic fury, making all kinds of unflattering comments, entirely in Spanish, about the weight of her two visitors, their odd manner of dress, their sexual habits, etc. I knew just enough Spanish to be hysterically gasping for air....

We didn't visit too long that day. Being old, together, somehow wasn't quite enough....
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Fri 3 Aug 2007, 21:52, Reply)