Mom’s Say the Darnest Things

Mama Honest is the bestest and although she can be worrisome on certain issues she really is the best mom a girl could want. My parent’s were born and raised in Haiti and both left in the early 60’s and eventually immigrated to the US in 1970 after they’d met and gotten married in Europe. Despite 36 years in the US their accents are still pretty thick. They also have a habit of mispronouncing words or incorrectly using certain phrases in conversations.

When my dad was visiting me a few weekends ago a friend of mine came by whose parents are also foreigners and is used to accents. After she left she commented that although she laughed she had no idea what he was saying. My dad says that we “people” hear with an accent and he speaks perfect English.

Yesterday my mom and I stopped at Circuit cit.y to buy a flash drive for her laptop and I reverted back into my childhood and asked her to buy me a DVD. When she said no, this led to a funny exchange with the cashier and ended with my mom saying and I quote “She’s a working girl; she can by her own DVD”. I saw the puzzled look the cashier gave my mom and when we left I had to tell my mom she just told the cashier I was a prostitute. As you can imagine she was a bit embarrassed but I’m used to these scenarios with my parents.

A long time ago my mom was telling me a story and kept repeating “It’s a meat, a meat”. When I was a teenager and my mom or dad was telling a story and they weren’t clear or didn’t pronounce something and I didn’t understand I’d just ignore them and keep moving. A few years later my mom repeated the “it’s a meat” story and when I finally stopped and asked her what in the world she was talking about she said “meat, you know not necessarily true, fairy tale”. It finally dawned on me that she was trying to say “Myth”. I was like “Ma its Myth” and she’s like yeah that’s what I said “meat”.

Unfortunately the French language lacks “th”