¿Mi Tio?

     At one point in my long life of 25 years (you can tell I just had a birthday because I’m feeling old), I spent eleven weeks in Mexico doing mission work.  I thought after having studied the Rosetta Stone program and having taken Spanish lessons from a teacher, that I would pick up on Spanish quite quickly. Not so.

     The little Mexican kids would babble on to me about something, and I would be like, “Your grandma ate a brick and then rented a llama? What?”

     Ok, it wasn’t exactly like that, but I could catch a few nouns here and there, and body language and hand motions were my friends.

     One fine evening, I went with the missionary family and Joanne (another single girl) to a birthday party of a young lady from the church. They did the usual tradition of smashing her face in her birthday cake as she tried to take a bite with no hands. That was exciting, and I still had yet to embarrass myself. It was a good night.

     Later on, Joanne and I were in a group of young people and the birthday girl introduced me to a young man.

     She said, “Es mi tio.”

     I figured Mi Tio was his name, so I said, “Mi Tio?” To make sure I pronounced it right.

     At that, everyone burst out laughing and the birthday girl was saying, “No, es MI tio. MI tio.”

     Finally, Joanne had calmed down enough to tell me that “tio” meant “uncle”.

     So, she had said, “This is my uncle.”

     I had said, “My uncle?”

     “No, MY uncle. MY uncle.”

     Of course I turned red, the uncle was amused, and every time I saw the birthday girl after that, she would give me a sly grin, and say, “Mi tio.”