Mexicans always have trouble classifying themselves ethnically or racially on paperwork such as questionnaires, job applications, census forms, and hospital admissions forms. You know, the part where you must choose among White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, etc.

Well, admittedly, Mexicans have it a lot easier now, but things were much different when I was growing up in the 1960s. As the best English speaker in my family, I would often have to translate for my parents in many situations. So, I would have to explain to them where to print their name, address, telephone number, and other pertinent information on the various forms they would bring home to fill out.

The one that always stumped us was the section labeled Race. There were only three boxes from which to choose: W N O. No explanations were given, just initials. W was easy to interpret because it obviously stood for “White.” N was a little trickier for me as an eight-year-old boy. From what I heard, N stood for Negro which was the “official” race category at that time.

However, judging by the racial discrimination that existed in the 1960s, I’m sure that what the authorities really meant by N was the N-word. So, what did O stand for? I never quite figured O out. I wasn’t sure if O meant Other or Oriental. Just so no one would laugh at us if we were mistaken about O, we would always check W.

We were fairly sure that we weren’t W, but we were also fairly sure we weren’t N. As far as O was concerned, we didn’t even know what O stood for, so how could we choose O. W was the safest choice. And no one ever criticized our decision. Nowadays, I often have the option of choosing Mexican, thereby making my life a little simpler.

Spanish textbooks often discuss the topic of Hispanidad, which is an interesting topic indeed. Some people are considered Hispanic if they have parents who are Hispanic, even if they no longer speak Spanish or practice any Hispanic customs. “Hispanic” is a unique classification in that it is not based on race, but rather on culture. People of any race are considered Hispanic if they live in a Spanish-speaking country and speak Spanish. Can you be of Japanese descent and still be considered Hispanic? Well, yes. Remember President Alberto Fujimori of Perú? He was Hispanic, until, that is, he sought political asylum in Japan because of his Japanese ancestry. That and the fact that Japan didn’t have an extradition treaty with Perú who wanted to prosecute Fujimori for human rights violations.

One of my students was of Korean descent, but she was Hispanic by virtue of having been born and raised in Argentina. The most critical component of hispanidad is the culture in which one was raised. I remember once when I was with my sons in a McDonald’s parking lot in Back of the Yards, a male black approached me and wanted to sell me a bag of peanuts.

He was very insistent. I kept trying to ignore him, and when that didn’t work, I kept telling him I didn’t want to buy any peanuts. I figured he was just another one of these street peddlers trying to hustle some money. He was very persistent.

When I started to walk into McDonald’s, he followed me into the restaurant. Finally, he spoke to me in Spanish. He spoke Spanish fluently. In fact, it turned out that he was a native Spanish speaker. We spoke for a few minutes, and I learned that he had been born and raised in Cuba, which I guessed immediately because of his accent. I guess I stereotyped him because he was selling peanuts on the street, and in Chicago, we all have certain images associated with these street vendors. Anyway, he turned out to be a nice man who was selling peanuts for his church (non-Catholic). Yes, I bought some peanuts!

I don’t actually have a Man Speech, but I wish I would have written one long ago. Normally, when I meet a girl and I want to impress on her that I would be an ideal mate / boyfriend / lover / husband, I try to be witty by saying something like, “You’ll love me. I’m housebroken. I put the toilet seat down!”

Well, I’ve reached the age when I realize that I should plan ahead and start with preventive maintenance right from the beginning of a relationship. I should have done this all along. It’s never too soon to start meaningful relationship damage control. The next time I meet a girl, she will get my Man Speech in which I detail all my faults and defects. If she is foolish enough to continue associating with me, she will have no one to blame but herself. I haven’t exactly worked out all the details of this Man Speech of mine, but I feel that I should tell her absolutely every one of my faults, if she’ll listen to me talk long enough to make a fool of myself. I think my Man Speech should go something like this:

Are you sure you want to date me? I’m too emotionally needy. I’m too clingy. I bite my nails. Are you ready for that? I have a lot of emotional baggage, too. So much so that I won’t be able to lug around your emotional baggage, too. And, I also have a few faults. I’m selfish. I demand a lot of attention. I’m a loner. And I bite my nails. I don’t take orders well. Eventually, I’ll take you for granted. Can you deal with that? I will forget your birthday, your ring size, and your anniversary of when we met. I will forget everything important about you. You will be annoyed when I become obsessed by cleaning the lint from my belly button while I’m supposed to be listening to you. You will yell and scream at me, and justifiably so, and it won’t even faze me, which will make you angrier, which in turn will alienate me from you. I will forget to buy you flowers, but I will remember to make up some lame excuse as to why I forgot. And, by the way, I bite my nails.

What do you think of my Man Speech? Sure, it needs a little more polishing, but I’ll keep working on improving it. When the day comes that she is so angry at me that she wants to strangle me, I can tell her that I warned her right from the moment we met. Surely, the moment will come when she absolutely hates me absolutely, for reasons unbeknownst to me, and she tells me how evil I am, even more evil than (insert your most hated person here). But I will be able to tell her, “I warned you! I told you that I bite my nails! And just how exactly does biting my nails make me evil and a world terrorizer?” That’s the beauty of my Man Speech! I’ve anticipated many potential problems that would destroy our relationship. This Man Speech will solve many of my future relationship problems because if I deliver this Man Speech to a prospective prospect, I will never have another romantic relationship. But, hey, I can daydream!

El mundo es un pañuelo. That’s a saying in Spanish that literally means the world is a handkerchief, or it’s a small world.

And if you think about it, now with the Internet, It’s a Small, Small World, and thanks in part to Walt Disney and the most famous, but lamest of all his rides.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to Google El mundo es un pañuelo. I Google the phrase without the ñ to see if the phrase would pop up. It did. There were some interesting explanations about literal and figurative translations. I thought that maybe I could find a video or something interesting to e-mail to my Spanish classes. I found some interesting videos, but none that I could send to my students. 

One was a parody in Spanish of a telenovela that starts out fine, but then gets boring; I didn’t see the whole video. I found another one that was a school project about a male and female and their parallel lives who finally meet one morning because they live across the hall from each other. The explanatory text was in Portuguese, which confused me as to why it had a Spanish title.

The most interesting one was on MySpace, with the same title, but in a language other than English or Spanish. A boy is on the Internet taking off his pants for a girl who took off her shirt. Then he’s called down to eat with his family. At the table, he realizes the girl on the Internet was his sister and she also realizes with whom she was chatting. At that moment, the video ends. Finally, I decided that I had better not send any of those links to my students. ¡Ay!

Hoy es domingo. To Mexicans, Sunday is a very special day of the week even if they don’t go to church. That is the day reserved to do things that they can’t do the rest of the week.

Our family usually began Sunday morning by going to mass at one of the many churches that we frequented: Holy Cross Church, St. Francis Assisi, St. Procopius, Providence of God, or Immaculate Heart of Mary. After mass, we would go to Mercado Internacional on 45th and Ashland for bolillos and carnitas so we could eat while we went on our all-day excursion–or as we say in Spanish, “Nos paseábamos.”

We would make the rounds of different relatives and family friends. Some Sundays we would stay home and other Mexicans would visit us. In the summer, we would go to the beach or the zoo. But the thing that I remember most about these Sundays was what Mexicans call el domingo. Literally, it means the Sunday. However, on Sundays, Mexican adults give children money as their domingo.

It’s just one of those Mexican customs that no one knows how it began. Normally, all the adults give money to the children. I remember my Uncle Simon giving us a quarter each and a half-dollar to my brother Rick because Uncle Simon was his godfather. And if the adults forget about doling out el domingo, the children are allowed to remind them.

When I was in Mexico, I had completely forgotten all about el domingo. As luck would have it, I met many children every Sunday that I was in Mexico. My first Sunday in Celaya, some of my second cousins, all of whom were under twelve, reminded me. At first, I thought they were being rude, but then I remembered that that was how we acted when we were children when it came to el domingo. So I gave each child twenty pesos each, about two dollars. And they were all happy with that. I actually enjoyed giving them their domingo!