Walking on Eggshells

We've all been there. The time comes to stride gracefully over a sea of broken traditions and unfamiliar cultural norms, and the most we can do is shake violently and weep internally.


My girlfriend is Puerto Rican. She speaks 3 languages fluently and Portuguese moderately. I classify Portuguese as something else because any language that sounds like an opera singer hopped up on three Epinephrine pens is not a language to me.



When it came time to meet her entire extended family I was semi-terrified. We had only been dating for 4 weeks when I flew down to the island to meet everyone. The only Spanish skills I possessed came from my high school, a remote fortress buried in the prairie's of Iowa. We didn't have much for cultural immersion.

I can elaborate to wit's end on the number of pets I have, or where my toes are, or how my father is doing at the moment. But ask me about how many pets I had, or plan to have, and I will respond by screaming about where my pants have gone.

When I have nothing to say, I feel naked. The only adequate response is to ask you, the harbinger of this silence, where the hell you put my pants.

The meeting of the family went well. I met both her mother and sister while I was in my underwear, which always bodes for a solid, communicative relationship. I made omelets with her mother, killed zombies with her brothers, and broke a family ornament. All in all, it was a productive trip.

Except for one small incident.

At the New Year's celebration I met her 'uncle.' He quickly threatened to murder me, and told me he could get away with it because he was the lawyer of the Puerto Rican mafia.

I didn't know Puerto Ricans shared so much culture with Italians. This revelation is what caused the surprised expression on my face. I wasn't so worried about being dismembered and fed to sharks. For those of you who have seen Snatch, you know that messing with pig farmers is the worst idea. My grand parents own a huge number of pigs. I feel secure behind their blanket of bacony goodness.

After a few minutes of comical threatening banter, the girlfriend told him that I could speak a little bit of Spanish. I wanted to make my woman proud and so, from the deepest bowels of my mind, I summoned up three words.




And with that I told a man who had just threatened to murder me that I liked myself. I realized it too late to pull the words back through the air, down my windpipe, and back into my lungs, where their abominable reign began.

I stood, pantless, yet unable to scream my safety phrase. DONDE ESTA MI PANTALONEEEEEEEEES!!!!111one!eleven!!!