There are Gold Nuggets everywhere, I will find them and post them.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

I passed on some bad genes

Well, it was bound to happen. 10-26-05 marks the first time I take one of my daughters to the emergency room. My baby fell playing with her sister, landed awkwardly and unbeknownst to us, dislocated her elbow.

She started crying and when she wouldn't calm down I knew something was definitely wrong. She is one of the twins and she's always the one that gets hurt somehow. She has hit her head on a desk while running, scrapped her knees numerous times, and has she, more often than not, seems to be the one that instigates trouble.

My wife and parents will tell you that this is definitely from my pool of genes that I remorsefully passed on to her.

When I was 3 I had a chair fall on my head and cracked my head open and needed stitches. When I was 5 I was walkin on a brink fence that was about 10-15 feet high, I fell down and busted my ankle. When I was 6 or 7 I broke all the little bones on my wrist and and little chip of a bone punctured my skin. The list of other injuries goes on and on. I cracked my tailbone, almost torn my ACL, I dislocated my shoulder and chipped a bone in my other ankle.

It was so bad that all the doctors knew me and certainly all the nurses did too. I often talk about it with my parents and of course we laugh at it now and until this point I never thought as to how the felt everytime I hurt my self.

As I was holding my baby, and she was crying from pain, nothing hurt this much before, not even when I got dumped by my first "girlfriend" in 6th grade. This hurt like you guys wouldn't believe. Freakinrican, you will soon experience all these things.

My baby couldn't move her arm and everytime the doctor would move it she would start wailing. I know the doctor was helping her but at that time I wanted to bitch slap the doctor and call her incompetent for not making it better instantly.

I was holding my baby as tight as I could and I could feel her tears on my cheeks. All of a sudden, my wife says "I heard a pop." As soon as she said that my baby was smiling moving her arm and holding the stickers the doctor gave her.

Why oh why did I have to pass on this gene. I know there will be more times were I will find myself in the emergency room at midnight. I just hope that all the problems can be fixed as quickly as this one did.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Cracker

This word came up twice this past weekend. I was mowing the lawn listening to Bigger and Blacker by Chris Rock. There is a part there were he's talking about old man Willie, and he says "cracka ass cracka." I was laughing at the word and how ridiculous it is for that to be an insult, it's like me saying "humus ass humus" to a Jew and him taking offense to that. Anyway the real point to this is how the word Cracker came up a second time.

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I was home watching college football. The wife was tired from a loooooong night with the baby staying up and she was sleeping. That left me with the many responsibilities of watching very active twin daughters. To say the least I did as little as possible, not because I was lazy (well maybe a bit) but because I was also tired.

The twins woke up from their nap at around noon. I gave them spaghetti and I was keeping them company. One of my daughters saw crackers on the table and she asked "papi cookies please?" I then look at her and say "honey, this is a cracker not a cookie, can you say cracker?"
She looks at me and says "No cracka, is a cookie?"

I say "no, say cracker"
daughter "cracka"
Me "cracker"
her "cracka"
Me "that's good, don't forget, this is a cracker and those are cookies."

What a good dad right, teaching his daughter the difference between a cracker and a cookie. This lesson was almost deadly.

Later that after noon the family went to the mall to take a stroll. We're in the food court, and there is a lot of people, WHITE people. We're get chinese food at the food court and we get those lovely fortune cookies. Just as a white guy passes by our table, my daughter points (from a certain angle it would've looked like she was pointing at the guy, but she was pointing at the cookie) and says "cracka."

OH shit, I hope he didn't hear that. I don't think he did but there was a slight flinch as he walked that made me think twice. I quietly lean over to my daughter and say "honey, this is a cookie not a cracker." Again, a white girl passes by and my daughter says "NO, cracka." This time the girl kind of turns her head, but doesn't say anything. I hope she didn't think the worse. Lucky for me, my daughters aren't speaking quite as clearly yet. If they would've stopped and ask her to repeat it, they would've understood her, but since they didn't my Brown ass got lucky. Undoubtedly my wife looks at me in disappointment and says "See what you teach them?"

The goldnugget of the day is: If you have kids just learning to talk, watch what you say because when you least expect it they will repeat something you said earlier. It could be nothing or it could be as bad as being the only minority, surrounded by whites and your kid says CRACKA.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Childish Behavior

When I was in undergrad I was working for a law firm as a messenger delivering letters, filing documents in the courthouse, etc. I was working there for a while when the firm decided to hire another person. They hired this white guy who looked like he just got back from a Dave Mathews Band concert with his hair all over the place, a track jacket and non-matching soccer socks. I may not be completely accurate about what he was wearing the first day I saw him but it is definitely what he wore other days. I took one look at him and thought that he was an indigent client and was in desperate need of help, we'll call him Jake.

Jake was the new messenger and we became good friends along the way. We did many things we shouldn't have done but since they loved us so much at the firm we got away with a lot. On the nice summer days we would sometimes take our bosses lexus for a wash or maintenance shop. We would think of a lie so we both could leave at the same time and we both could cruise with this nice ride (in case you're wondering it was, at the time, one of the first lexus SC430, red, hard top convertible, nice car). Of course we would take the long way to go to these places.

One of the many childish things I would do to embarrass him was something like; I would pull next to a girl (didn't matter if she was good looking or not) I would say to Jake "damn Jake check her out." Not knowing the goldnugget for his childish behavior, he would look at the girl and I would whistle at her or say something like "DAAAAAMMMMMNNN," the girl would turn to look in our direction and she would see Jake looking at her thinking it was him that whistled or said that. He would just give this embarrassed smile and call me an asshole.

Childish right? I tried to do as many things to embarrass him. I think one of the worse things I did was the following. We would often say racial things to each other and I would play the racial card, and minorities always win this game. I was driving with a bunch of my friends (all hispanic) in a car. It was a Puerto Rican friend of mine driving his Toyota corolla, circa 1980, and it was about 7 of us packed in this tiny car (I think we met the quota for generalizations about hispanics, you know, PR always driving toyota, hispanics packing as many people in one car, etc). Any way we were driving in the parking lot of the Athletic center of UWM. As we're making the turn I notice Jake walking by himself, looking as stragly as always, towards his car. He noticed me in the car and said something, I can't remember what it was. I stick half of my body out the window and I jokingly yell "KILL WHITEY!!!"
What's so embarrassing you say? Well, what I didn't notice was that not to far behind him was a group of about 10 black guys, which I'm sure just got done playing basketball. They heard me scream "kill whitey," and they noticed Jake and his appearance, and started laughing really loud. Jake also noticed the black guys behind him and all he could do was just put his head down in shame and embarrassment.

Some may think that was mean, but Jake and I still laugh about it to the day. Some may ask "why would u say kill whitey." Well the answer to that is simple. The night before I watched Black Sheep with Chris Farley. There is a scene in the movie were he goes back stage to talk to the reggae groups that is about to go on stage. Being Jamaican and a reggea group called for them to smoke weed. Chris gets high from the smoke, gets on stage and starts singing with the band and then he starts talking, getting the crowd going and then he screams "KILL WHITEY."
(freakinrican, you know what I'm talking about right?)
Obviously this scene was fresh in my head and I was compelled to say it.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Bad influence.

I'll make this short and sweet.

I have twin daughters and they're 2 years old. They talk quite a bit but not always complete sentences. The other day they had me laughing so hard and at the same time it made me think "am I bad influence on them?"

My kids love watching Sesame street, Telletubies, Barney, etc. One of the shows they like is Reading Rainbow. If you guys are familiar with that PBS show, the host of the show is this black guy, his name is Lamar. Every time the shows comes one and see Lamar they say right away "Papi, Reading Rainbow," and watch attentively.

It's cute, until I noticed a pattern the other day. The Bernie Mack show came on and my daughters see Bernie and scream "Papi, Reading Rainbow." Then we're watching the a different show and a black guy goes on the screen and my daughters again say "Papi, Reading Rainbow."

What does this tell me? All Black people look a like. Minorities always joke on how they all look a like and as you can see, it doesn't take a white prejudiced male to notice that. Here is another example.

We were watching TV the other day with my daughters and in support of Hispanic actors we patiently waited for the season premiere of The George Lopez show. The show comes on, George Lopez is on screen and my daughters scream "Look it's Papi." Oh damn, not me, why me? I'm hopping that's the end of that and was a simple mistake. Then the next day we're flipping through channels and we come across the movie Born in East LA with Cheech Marin. My daughters see Cheech and what do they scream? You guessed it "Look it's Papi."

So you see readership, not only all black people look a like but al Hispanics look alike too. It hurts more for me because my daughters see me every day, we play together, I feed them, I change their clothes, I buy their clothes, and yet they still confuse me with George Lopez and Cheech Marin.

You have to love their innocence, or maybe it's my bad influence on them.

Here's the Gold Nugget: Minorities, don't get mad at white people when they confuse you with another fellow black or fellow Hispanic person. It's true, we all look alike. By the way my Asian friends, you're not exempt from this, you too, look alike.