Month: June 2010

An unexpectedly delightful guest post: 32 things about Latinos in Canada

I was procrastinating on Twitter instead of writing the blog post I’d been hoping to write, and sweet Guillermo took my pathetic whimper about writer’s block to heart. To my absolute delight, the following appeared in my in-box just a little while later. You really didn’t think I’d post it, did you Guillermo? But really, after reading it, how could I not??

Hi there! My name is Guillermo (“William” for you my “anglo” friend, “Guillaume” pour vous, mon ami) and I am a latinamerican immigrant to Canada. Well… to be correct I’m not an immigrant any more because I already swore my commitment to our mutual friend “Elizabeth”. But you and I know that an immigrant is always an immigrant with or without the navy blue passport.

So, today DaniGirl had writer’s block and I tried to help her by sending her a few subjects she could use. In exchange, she mocked at me and dared to ask me to write a post for her. And here I am, dressed as Mr. Creativity, writing a blog in my second (third?) language for an English speaking audience of mothers that were expecting to see beautiful pictures of very nice toddlers and found something else. But let’s see how it goes…

As I told you before, I am from Latin America. More exactly, from Argentina. “Wow!” you may be saying to yourself at this time “So far! Is it always warm down there? Does he look like Antonio Banderas?” Others, more enthusiastic, may be are saying “Mmmm… Latino!” You are all wrong. It’s not always warm, I do not look like Banderas. And I’m not that tasty. Also, I’ve been living with my family in Canada for the last 5 years and we’ve enjoyed this journey a lot (not a hundred percent of the time… but most of it.) Thanks for letting us in!

Today, I to share with you some facts about latinos and “argies” in particular… Maybe I’m destroying some myths on my way so I apologize! This is a payback for the guy that told me hockey was fun and soccer was boring.

1. All Latinos are not Mexicans.
2. If you think all Latinos are Mexicans, then all Latinos look like Mexicans.
3. If you think all Mexicans look “kind of toasted”, therefore all Latinos look the same way.
4. When one of the rules above do not apply, someone can tell you “Really?! I did not know there was white people down there?” Yeah, it happened!
5. Not all the Latinos look like Banderas. Some of us look much better.
6. And not all Latinos are great lovers. Many of them are…
7. Not all the “Latinas” look like Jennifer Lopez. Some of them are hot, pretty and can dance and sing very well.
8. We love soccer but we watch hockey games just to guess where the puck is, not because we like it.
9. We cannot understand games that are played with a ball that cannot be found or clearly seen.
10. Every four years we teach Canadians what soccer is about and give them a chance to know that soccer is not only that game your wife takes your daughter to Saturday afternoons. It’s also a men’s game.
11. And every four years we feel forced to put our national flags in the car to see if we can find another soccer lover at least once!
12. Tex-Mex food that you see in TV ads is not Mexican. They do not even eat it there! It’s some USA invention to make you believe that that is Mexican food. Really!
13. Argentina is not part of Brazil.
14. And Rio de Janeiro is part of Brazil, not our capital city.
15. And they are the ones that speak Portuguese, not us.
16. Buenos Aires has winter. A zero degrees winter, but winter.
17. No. We do not have snow in Buenos Aires.
18. But we do have it in the Patagonia and some other provinces.
19. Patagonia is a place where we used to have dinosaurs and now we have English farmers, sheeps and Turner’s cottage.
20. In Quebec they like to say they are like “northern latinos”. They also say they speak French, and that does not always seem to be true.
21. Not all the Latinos dance salsa.
22. Or “Bamba”
23. Or “Tango”
24. Or dance at all.
25. Chavez is not a “hero”. Nor is Castro. Those are all myths.
26. “Che” Guevara was from Argentina. But he never met Evita.
27. Evita never sang “Don’t Cry for me Argentina”
28. And she was an awful actress from the 40s that ended up engaging a dictator.
29. Yes, we all talk loud. No, we do not have hearing problem. We just like to be noticed.
30. In Argentina we used to have a diet based mostly on beef. In Canada I reduced my cholesterol levels and learned to appreciate pork and chicken. Thanks!
31. Most of “Dulce de leche” you can find at Superstore or Costco is from Argentina. Be careful! That’s how many invasions started!
32. We are use to having economical or political crisis every now and then. Harper helps us to feel less homesick sometimes. Thanks “Steve”!

And may be there are a thousand more that I’ll keep for another time. If you and DaniGirl allow me.

Chau!

You can read my blog and practice your Spanish everyday at “Los Ziegler en Canadá“. I hope to see you there!

Mr Popularity

My boys are getting to an age now where despite their inherent adorableness, maybe I shouldn’t exploit them and their personal stories for the blog in the same way I once did. Of course, the toddling menace is still fair game, but at six and eight, the big boys are starting to deserve a little extra privacy and respect, I think.

Giving up such a rich source of blog fodder has made me sad — I feel I’ve lost easy intimacy with which I once blogged. Recently, though, I realized that in my trio of boys not only am I my own perpetual hand-me-down machine, but I can blog generically with a single pronoun. I can blog about a boy, not that boy. So this is a story not about a specific boy, but about any generic boy who might be a son of mine.

Let me amble down one more tangential preface by saying this: those of you who have been around for a while might remember that I have, um, some social issues left over from my grade school years. I was, for reasons that mystify me to this day, the runt of the litter among my peers. Often singled out for teasing and never part of the in-crowd, my grade school years were something to be endured rather than enjoyed. So when the boys turned from toddlers to preschoolers to kindergarteners, my own anxiety levels crept steadily upward. I really wasn’t sure I could face the inherent cruelty of school-agers again, even if by proxy.

I needn’t have worried.

This boy we’re not specifying is Mr Popularity. Remember Norm from Cheers? It’s like that every single day when we bring this boy to school — his classmates call out enthusiastic greetings to him as if he’s been gone for weeks instead of hours. He gets invited to all the birthday parties. He gets chosen at least once a week to be the “special helper” of the person of the day, from a rotating roster of admirers.

I’m proud, if not perplexed. I mean, no doubt he’s a delightful boy, and I love him dearly. But he’s prone to snarkiness at home, and a whinyness that grates like fingers on a chalkboard. He’s my son and so of course I think he’s the smartest, sweetest thing to ever walk on two legs — it’s just sweetly perplexing that his entire class seems to think so as well.

All of this is charming, to say the least. But it’s somewhat problematic as well. In addition to the unexpected chat about how it is not appropriate to kiss your girlfriend in the cloak room (at five years old, no less! Five!!) there has been an unanticipated burden in all this affection.

I don’t know what to do with the love notes.

Every single day, his backpack overflows (I kid you not) with paper hearts and cards. Books constructed of coloured paper stapled crookedly down one side depict rainbows, flowers and butterflies. This week, we’ve received printed declarations of love, etched in a beginning-writer’s careful print from two different girls. It would be adorable if I weren’t trying to figure out what to do with it all every. single. day. This is today’s cull:

love notes

My boys are creative souls, and not a day goes by without drawings and crafts being made. Clutter is already a huge issue in my house, and even a nostalgic soul like me has to toughen up and throw most of it out. So call me cruel, but I just can’t preserve this growing stack of everlasting love declared on bristol board and glitter. But I am conflicted. I have been that girl, pouring out that unrequited love, deep in my conviction that the six-year-old cutie sitting at the next desk would be my soul mate for life.

The boy is stoic about all this female attention. He calls each of them his girlfriend, but says he loves each of them in a different way. I suppose I needn’t have worried about them being excluded. Just the opposite, in fact. My boy is a playa.

Who knew it was possible to be proud and mortified at the same time?