Stephanie Ramirezrevised

Stephanie Ramirez 2pm English 101 Archibald September 11, 2008 English Comfort

It was a cloudy yet windy day, within every breeze you could smell the scent of maple leaves and pine trees which surrounded our light brown, old, wooden home. I was seven years old, we lived in an apartment. My dad kept the windows open because he was exercising on his new treadmill XL2000 (this is when he used to work out). As he was running and sweating off his digested calories, I was in my room praticando mi espanol, well, as far as he knew.

I was sitting on my bed with the Precious Moments bedspread; it had a young brown headed boy leaning into a kiss with a young blonde haired girl in a pretty pink dress and the overall color of the bed sheets was a light purple. Yuck! It was one of my least favorite bedspreads. My favorite was my Hello Kitty one. It was of course a picture of white cat wearing red trousers with a white shirt, topped with a yellow bow. It matched with all my other Hello Kitty materials and accessories. I had it all, a little Hello Kitty coin purse keychain attached to the matching backpack and inside was a very valuable pencil pouch that contained Hello Kitty erasers, sharpeners, and pencils, along with my Hello Kitty brush and matching mirror. However the Hello Kitty bed sheets were dirty, so here I was stuck with Precious Moments.

As I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed I’m reading (well more like forced reading) my big Spanish book of words. The title of the book was “Mi Primier Vocabulario en Ingles” Besides the title, what I remember most are the book’s details, it’s almost as if I were looking at it right now. It was BIG and HEAVY with the colors red and white. I think it’s the red that made the book stand out the most, even though the book was mainly white, but white is too plain and dull of a color to be noticed. The front cover had random little illustrations with the English word underneath in bold, and underneath the English was the Spanish translation in regular black font. The pictures included a motorbike (moto), a strawberry (fresa), a seal (foca), a shoe (zapato), a rose (rosa), and a dinosaur (dinosaurio). I HATED reading Spanish out of that book, actually I hated reading out of that book more than I hated reading

Spanish. It could have been a book about how to say words in Japanese and I would have still hated the book as much as I hated it in Spanish. Papa would assign me at least two pages to read a day so I could practice my Spanish.

Since I moved to Washington, I’ve been taught to adapt into the American culture, and by this I mean speaking English. I had gotten so used to speaking English, that I soon loss interest in speaking Spanish. No one else I knew, besides my parents, spoke Spanish. So I thought, “What’s the use?” My dad noticed this whenever we had a conversation, he always talked to me in Spanish while I always replied to him in English. This is what started the daily two page Spanish Vocabulary nonsense.

Today among most other days I didn’t feel like reading or practicing words in Spanish. Today was a hot summer day, the house was suffocating and holding me in with all the heat, the only way to breathe was to go outside, but it wasn’t a hot sunny day, in fact it was a breezy, cloudy, fall day. I wanted to take a nap, do some homework, clean my room, and organize my closest. I wanted to do ANYTHING other than read from “Mi Primier Vocabulario en Ingles”. But today, I decided not to read my daily assigned pages. So, I jumped off my bed, walked out of my door, and marched down the narrow hallway.

My marching started slowly progressing as I was getting closer and closer to my father. I could tell the T.V was turned on at its maximum volume, but for some reason my father’s vigorous breathing overpowered it. It was cold now; I was in the living room. I don’t exactly remember how this event happened but I’ll tell you what I do remember. My dad was wearing a blue and black windbreaker with black matching sweats, the house stunk from his sweat, the pots and pans were rattling on the stove, and dinner was getting cooked while my mom was coming home from work. The light from the T.V was continuously flashing and reflecting off the pictures around the house. The moment came faster than I expected, I was in sight of my father. I walked toward him, last chance, I took a deep breath. This was my first mistake. I approached him by asking, “Papa, can I take a break today, I don’t feel like practicing Spanish, please, I don’t want to read anymore”. Instead of saying “Papa, I completed the two pages, would you like me practice saying them to you?” which is what he probably expected or at least hoped I would say. I didn’t hear him say anything; instead I just looked five feet above me

to see his facial expression. He was angry. He always made “that face” whenever I did or said something wrong, it was one of those faces you would get when you’re trying to hold back any sound or emotion, but I know he wasn’t going to hold back his anger. He looked at me for awhile and then started going off in his outraged rant, all I could focus on was the volume of his anger, oh was he mad. I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was yelling about, but it got to the point where he said something that was important to hear, something that would have kept me from making a stupid, innocent mistake. I missed it, I missed what he said, maybe it was because I was trying to concentrate more on the noise which surrounded me; the wind, the rustle of the leaves in the tree, the murmur of the television, the rattling of the pots and pans, anything that helped me from focusing back onto my father’s facial expressions. What caused me to focus back into reality was when he said “HUH?” In a very loud and affirmative tone. My initial reaction was a mistake, I said “No”. I didn’t know what I said “No” to but I still said it, “No”. My father paused, making another face…this time I couldn’t tell what face this was, it was a face I’ve never seen before, and it turns out it was disappointment. Then he looked at me again and said “Okay, you don’t want to learn Spanish… I won’t teach it to you, I won’t let you practice it…now get out of my face”. I guess you can say I got what I wanted, but at the same time I got what I regretted. I could of said “No, papa I couldn’t hear you, I do want to learn Spanish” but the situation kept me silent, and at the same time I was glad. I finally got rid of the red book.

Since I turned eight, I’ve stopped speaking Spanish. Since that situation, I felt like there was no purpose in going back. When I speak Spanish, I notice that I have lost my touch. I can’t continue a whole conversation without putting in some English words here and there, I can’t even roll my R’s anymore, and overall I lost my accent. Over time I’ve gotten adjusted to speaking English more than Espanol. The English language has grown to be more comfortable for me. I’ve adapted into America’s major language.

Throughout my life I’ve had many friends from influential Hispanic backgrounds. Since junior high I’ve observed my Hispanic friends speak Spanish with their family and friends. At times when I told my friends that I was Puerto Rican, they would find it hard to believe because they had never heard me speak a word of Spanish. Whenever my friends got together and had Spanish conversations, I

always felt left out, almost as if I was unaware of a different language. I understood their conversations, but I just couldn’t get myself to contribute within the discussion. I was embarrassed and uncomfortable. I always thought “What if they make fun of me?”

As of today I am a high school graduate of 2008 and a freshman at Saint Martin’s University. I am currently friends with Ricardo Hernandez, Sandra Martinez, and Viridiana Lopez. If you couldn’t tell by their names, all three of them come from a Hispanic Background. I remember one time Ricardo, Sandra, Viridiana, and I went to Tacoma to watch a play called “A Play Buffet”. We were standing outside an old, gray, brick building waiting to enter the building. As I was observing all the people and buildings that surrounded us, out of the blue I overheard them having a conversation in Spanish. I participated, or I at least tried. Within two sentences, everyone stopped, looked at me with a blank facial expression, looked at each other, and then laughed. I was made fun of due to my lack of accent, I felt excluded.

I’ve learned that Spanish is no longer a comfort, it’s an embarrassment. When situations like these happen, till this day, I will always have the memory of the time I said “No”, playing over and over in the back of my mind. This is a memory I will and can never forget. From this story, I’ve learned that by saying No to Spanish, I’ve hurt myself more than I’ve hurt mi padre.