International Relations: Family Dinner

I want to preface this by saying that I did not know what to write about. I have had some funny moments, but the difference between a funny moment and a funny story is whether or not it is long enough to actually warrant writing.

Case in point: Diplomacy-Dinner with Two Families

In this situation, my family had dinner with my wife's family. There was a lot of stress, leading up to the dinner, in that my folks are not the type to be outgoing. They like to do stuff, and talk to people, but generally they like this under the cover of anonymity. When it comes to talking to people that matter, and when their performance can impact others, my folks are less enthusiastic. Nothing wrong with that, they just get introverted. As a result, having a dinner with my wife's parents can be stressful. Be too introverted, and my folks worry they look rude. Be too extroverted, and my folks worry that they will be off-putting. Not to be mistaken with off-pudding, which is when you take your pants off because you ate too much pudding. Being off-pudding can be off-putting, however, if not everyone had the pudding. In that case, the person without the pudding should really reflect on what they are doing with their lives.

But during this dinner, everything went very well. Despite the stress that was associated with it, everyone was outgoing, sharing, and happy. In other words, everyone faked being happy with the dinner. As a result, however, the families proved that you really can fake it until you make it.

At one point in the conversation, the families were talking about learning each others' languages. My folks want to learn Chinese, and my wife's family wants to learn English. In doing so, they will be able to understand when their grandchildren (who will be bilingual) start talking shit. Why will our kids talk shit? Because fuck you, that's why. See what I did there? Anyway, my folks are talking about how it will be to learn Chinese.

My mom starts by talking about her struggles with learning Hebrew. she started learning at an adult level. Then, after a long struggle, she dropped to a college level. She then tried to learn at a high school level, when the college one did not work out. After struggling to learn at the high school level, my mom tried to learn at a middle school level. That did not do well, and she dropped to an elementary school level. She is now getting ready to start Sesame Street level Hebrew. At age 2-3, this is really the starting point. Now while this is a point of humor, it should be noted that Hebrew is hard as shit to learn. You have a completely different alphabet, different sounds, different sentence structures, different reading direction, different everything. So fuck you, don't judge. Chinese will actually be easier, with regards to the grammar. Fuck learning to read Chinese. 3000+ characters, and each character can be combined with others to create different words, or be solo and serve as their own word. Fuck that, and fuck its face. We only need to know how to speak and hear.

(You see this shit? So many fucking characters that mean all kinds of shit. I don't even know what those Chinese characters are, though I suspect that they are numbers and some simple words? At least the Hebrew is still an alphabet. You know that each thing has some sort of sound associated. Though to be fair, Hebrew has dots and dashes for vowels. Not saying English is easier, by any means. We fuck our language up, too. Case in point? Two, to, too, 2, tutu. Stupid language. And no, I'm not putting the English alphabet on there. This is originally written in English. If you translated it to a different language, then change that shit back and see how the English alphabet looks. Also, if you translated this into a different language, put something in the comments. Because that's fucking awesome. Also, this is the longest fucking parenthetical statement I have ever written. Fuck it, back to the story.)

In talking to my wife's parents, there was an agreement. My folks will help my mother-in-law learn English, and she will help my folks learn Chinese. My folks, thrilled at the notion, tried to say "thank you" in Chinese: 谢谢 (Pronounced: Shye Shye). My folks, in an attempt to say "Thank you", said "shishi", "shashi", "shisha", "shyeshye", etc. They kept going through every variation of the same general sounds, until my wife's mother leaned in and, in English, said "You're welcome!". After a healthy dose of laughter, we continue to eat, while my wife translates between the families. I feel bad for my wife, in that she did not really get to eat much. She did, however, get to have each conversation twice. I imagine that she was able to memorize quite a bit of the events that transpired. Regardless, the dinner ended with everyone smiling and happy that we are married. That's good, because otherwise it would be awkward.


Now this is a special case where a funny moment could be turned into a funny story. The really funny part was with my folks trying to say "thank you" in Chinese, and my wife's mother saying "you're welcome" in English. It's a small event that is really funny, but not really long enough for a full story. How did I turn it into a story? I gave a bunch of fluff detail. I give some background, and include a humorous little anecdote about my mom learning Hebrew (she tells the story much funnier).Add in some colorful language, and suddenly I have enough length to make a story. There's an innuendo there, somewhere.

Moral of the story: My family likes my wife's family, and my wife's family likes my family. Oh, and my kids are going to be big shit talkers.