My bro-THUH!

As a police officer, I work with many different partners. Partners of both sexes, different races, and many religions. I seem to get along with all my partners. One of my favorite partners, Calvin, is African-American and I enjoy working with him because we have so much in common. We both attended a Catholic school, we both went to the Marine Corps Boot Camp in San Diego, we are both college graduates, and we both work a second job. We actually have fun working together because we learn a lot from each other. One day we drove past a bus stop with an ad of displaying an African American. I said, “That looks like someone I should know.”And he told me it was Ludacriss, the rap singer. About a month later, my sons are flipping through the magazine and they stop to look at the same ad that I saw on the bus stop. My oldest son held up the magazine and challenged me. “I’ll bet you don’t even know who this is,” he said. I immediately fired back, “That’s Ludacriss!” My son was amazed.

Anyway, Calvin and I got along so well that he started calling me, “my bro-THUH.” I was flattered. One day he found out that I taught college Spanish for my second job. So he started calling me “mi hermano.” After a while, I missed hearing the words, “my bro-THUH,” so I started calling him “my bro-THUH.” Everytime he saw me, he would call me, “mi hermano” and I would call him, “my bro-thuh.” One day, another police officer witnessed our exchange of greetings and tried to be funny by saying, “You two don’t look like brothers!” And I said, “I didn’t say he was my brother. I said he was MY BRO-THUH!!!” That’s totally different, right?