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Some Like it Hot
John Pastore (venture@CANCUN.RCE.COM.MX)
Fri, 31 May 1996 01:49:16 +0000
In the interests of a case study, not unlike the "Aunt Dot"
communique a short while back...
On an occassion upon finding myself teaching English to some 60
'quincin~eras' (fifteen-year old girls):
"Oh, maestro, how many children do you have?"
"I don't know."
"What? Maestro aren't you married?"
"No."
"Well, how can you have children if your not married?"
"Better ask your mothers that, and fast the way the boys are looking
at you."
"Well, how can you not know how many children you have?"
"Well, its a long story, but basically I was ruthlessly victimized by
woman liberationists back in the 60's, 70's and 80's."
"What are woman's liberationists?"
"They were, or are, in the United States and other 'advanced'
countries, women who, in my case, wanted to be single parents. They
would look for the handsomest and smartest guy around to get
something baking in the oven, and then take off. I'd only learn
about it much later, after even the mutual acquaintances who would
inform me of the baker's delivery would no longer know where they
were living anymore."
"What's 'baking in the oven'?"
"Its an expression --a 'modismo'-- for a woman's condition after
swallowing a watermelon seed."
"Oh, we just love "modismos"! What's tommarrow's modismo going to
be?"
"You know you're getting older when..."
"When what?"
"When you're looking at the girls, and it dawns on you that one of
them could be one of your daughters."
"Oh maestro!"
:*)
Ka Xiik Keech Ya Utzil,
John Pastore
Writer/Guide in 'El Mayab'
("The Mayan Homeland")
venture@cancun.rce.com.mx
"A teepee is a pyramid, isn't it?"
Pyramid="fire (pyre) in the middle (amid)"
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