Now Dinner is a Winner!

I am surprising myself: three posts in three days… don’t get too used to this, I don’t know if I can maintain this habit…

Normally I just eat dinner with the other three kids in my house, while my parents and the domestic employee eat in the kitchen together watching TeleNovelas.  The other kids tend to just talk to each other when they are together while I smile and try to keep up with their slang (which I don’t learn in school).  This doesn’t really bother me, but I do prefer lunch when it’s just Eunice (my mom) and myself because she sits with me and is super funny and good at making conversation.

The last few nights, Eunice has joined us at “the kid table,” which has been a real treat!  I don’t know if she is just a sit-in (literally) while my host sister is gone this week or if she is planning on gracing our table with her presence more often, but whatever the case, I am really enjoying dinner these days. 

The other non-family member boarder (Ismael, 18) works for XelaPan, the bread tycoon in Xela, but my mom is openly partial to the underdog La Selecta, so this is a frequent yet friendly debate between Ismael and Eunice.  So not surprisingly, last night’s dinner conversation began with talking about bread.  Ismael doesn’t get lunch but can eat any reject bread he wants throughout the day, and thus over the past year since he has worked there apparently he has fattened up quite a bit, and Eunice did not hold back in saying so.  (That might sound awful, but Ismael has boarded with the family for 7 years now so he’s practically a family member.  Also, these words came from a woman who repeatedly admits that she is gordita).

She flat-out asked him how much he weighed and after his response (156 lbs) she looked to me to see what I had to say about that.  Not knowing what else to say, I told her I didn’t think he looked fat, which he thanked me for.  She agreed but told him that he shouldn’t get any bigger because 156 is a good line to hold.  Then she asked me how much I weigh (140, maybe?) and then she looked to the two boys to get their responses, to which they replied I didn’t look fat, and for which I thanked them.  She said I was tall (true) and pure muscle (not true) and that’s probably why I weigh that much, but that I am delgadita like Carlos, probably NOT a compliment for an almost 19-year-old boy.  So then she asked Carlitos how much he weighed (he said 129 lbs, but that seems a bit high).  To defend little bitty Carlos, I said that both of my brothers weighed 125 until they were in college, and that now my oldest brother weighs a lot, but that he (like me ;) ) is pure muscle. But instead of puro musculo, I said puro MASculo, which is a very silly mistake because it translates to “pure more ass.” To this, Eunice repeated what I said and did the motions to accompany the phrase (hands clawing at her butt) while we all laughed at another of my silly mistakes.

So dinner involved lots of laughing, and embarrassment felt by all parties, except maybe by the dear old matriarch.