Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Sibling alliances, sibling diplomacy, sibling translation

Recently I was irked with our daughter.  She was speaking and acting disrespectfully toward me during our out-of-state trip which required us to rent a minivan, of which we had our pick (being value-minded Taiwanese-Americans, we chose the top-of-the-line American model available to us, the Chrysler Pacifica).  It was replete with leather seats, premium audio with satellite radio, Bluetooth cellphone connectivity, motorized sliding doors, motorized back hatch, rear A/C controls, heated seats (which we "threatened" to use on them in the hot muggy Colorado summer weather if they misbehaved)... all foreign features for kids whose family cars are 14 - 22 years old!

Anyway, as we were driving I had gone on and on about how Evanglina needed to be more respectful to her parents... namely me at the time.

After some time of silence, I heard Evangelina comment in what I thought was a sarcastic tone, "I really like all this lecturing."

"What????!!!!!!"  I nearly blew my top, and was about about to lay it into her afresh!

Thankfully, Jadon intervened in a rather calm and matter-of-fact way: "Dad, Evangelina meant 'luxury' when she said 'lecturing.'"

Deflated from my narcissism, I thanked him for his effective "Mina-ese"-to-English translation. 

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