I Got an Aunt Ruth That Can't Remember Your Name

A week with the family is often a relaxing thing for most people. You fly to Sanjose (population 974,000, Asian population 1.2 million. Not sure how that works out, but I'm no mathemetice), you catch up, you laugh, you eat authentic Indian food and then you proceede to realize one major thing.

You are the dumbest person in your family.

I don't know when exactly that transformation happened, but when hanging out this weekend with my parents and some of my cousins (and second cousins) I hadn't seen in a few years it became painfully obvious. The kids that I knew that were just growing up had graduated from Georgetown, were going to NYU and basically reciting things that I had never heard of. Case in point, my second cousin has a nicer phone than me and was telling me the degrees in crookedness of Lombard St. and some other street that I thought he made up, but he didn't. He then proceeded to tell me how airplanes fly, how to move the ribcage during surgery, and the correct pigmentation of Michael Jackson's skin.

He's 12.

The Michael Jackson thing was freaky.

In full disclosure of this blog here are a few more things I learned this weekend with the family. Before I start a big FU of the week to United for cancelling my flight and making LAX look like Times Square on New Years. Thanks.

1. Indians drag out everything. If something is supposed to take 10 minutes it takes 20. If its supposed to take an hour it takes 2 and if it's supposed to last 3 hours( like a cricket match) it takes 7 days. On Saturday, one of my cousins was doing some kind of dance recital where I alternated between falling asleep and trying to find a sharp object to make myself bleed so I would have an excuse to leave the theater. I looked at the program and it said it was 6 acts. Really how long can 6 acts be? An hour tops? I mean it's just one girl dancing around in proper Indian dress and waht not. Nope it wasn't an hour.

4 MOTHER F"IN HOURS!

Seriously, can someone give my family a watch? It doesn't even have to be fancy. It could be a hello kitty watch. As long as it tells time. For real? 4 hours of sitting there and watchign someone dance is not my idea of fun. Well, unless said dance involves a girl named Ginger, some 80s rock like "Pur some sugra on me" and some glitter with my hands filled with singles.

Then yes.

2. My family can't pronounce certain words. I've known this for a long time (like my whole life) but it was in full display this weekend. The first couple times of pronouncing something wrong is cute and funny but the 8th time hearing your mom say Gran-night avenue instead of granite gets a little annoying. Here are the words that were mispronounced this weekend.

Perseverance ( pronounced Per-Seaver-ance) 4 times
Epitome (Epitomb) 2 times
Creek (Crick) 8 times
Feet (Foots) 12 times

I'm sure they're were many more but my head starting hurting after a little while and I pretended that I was not actually hearing the mispronunciations of those words.

3. My dad knows how to read - For some reason anytime we're in a different town my dad has to read every single sign that is on the road. Including storefronts.

"Oh honey there's a ...Star..bucks. Stevens road, Pancake house, McDonald's, Carls Jr, Szechuan number one best Chinese."

It goes on and on like that the whole weekend. I don't understand why he has to read EVERY single one. Dad, we get it. you're literate. You don't have to prove yourself to anyone else here. to cap it off he always has to relate everything back to me. So he'll read a sign and say, "Oh Starbucks..."

"Do you have a Starbucks in LA?"

No, we don't. LA is some alien planet that doesn't have Starbucks which I'm pretty sure is now more plentiful than air. Wait, let me look that up. Yes, There is more Starbucks than air on Earth.

4. My parents don't like me being immature. When we were at the recital on Saturday they were introducing all the dance teachers and the first one comes out and the MC goes, "She studied dance in BANG-alor."

I lost it.

I was giggling like a 4th grader that just got a big sugar rush from downing 8 pixie sticks and snorting one up his nose. As I was giggling my dad asked me what was so funny. I just responded, "you wouldn't get it," and kept giggling to myself. The second teacher came up and the MC goes again, "Studied in BANG-alor"

At this point I was hysterically laughing in the second row of the auditorium while everyone looked at me. My dad hit me in the arm and told me to have some respect.

"But dad, BANG-alor. Get It Bang?"
"Get out"

I'm stupid.