Chuckle #457 | June 22nd, 2011
Como se dice “Raging Hormones”?
In just a few weeks my daughter will head down to Costa Rica for a Spanish immersion/zip lining adventure program to DIE for. To prepare for this once-in-a-lifetime dream trip, my daughter has been watching hour upon hour of absolutely lurid Spanish soap operas. Even I, who was idiotic enough to agree to this trip in the first place, realize that these shows are completely inappropriate.
I may have only a minimal understanding of Spanish, but some things do NOT get lost in translation. Let’s just say she’s learning a lot, not the least of which is Spanish.
My daughter claims that watching Spanish soaps will hone her conversational skills and make her “home stay” with a local Costa Rican family more pleasant and fruitful. After watching a couple soap episodes, I have to wonder what she means by “fruitful”.
Thanks to “Teresa”, a dark haired vixen with truly astounding cleavage, my daughter can now conjugate verbs that she shouldn’t even know exist. With her new-found linguistic skills she will have no problem propositioning her host family’s teenage son in perfect, colloquial Spanish (accompanied by authentic hand gestures.)
Note to self, find a new host family without a teenage son.
My daughter’s fluency has definitely improved. With her newly enhanced vocabulary she can now deny poisoning her own father; ask a shopkeeper to check the stockroom for a size five thong; and tell a former lover that his bedroom skills are “better than ever”. (That would be “mejor que nunca.”) Which I mistakenly thought was “better than nothing” but that just goes to show you how educational the soaps have been.
My husband and I are obviously a bit nervous about this inaugural trip. We are desperately researching ways to keep our sweet, yet incongruously smut mouthed child safe on her first solo adventure out of the country. We’ve uncovered some interesting possibilities such as veiling, chastity belts, microchip implants, and, my husband’s personal favorite, going along.
(Which would of course defeat the purpose of the trip, but you know how hard it is for daddies to let go.)
I find the concept of the chastity belt most intriguing. I can totally understand how these clever contraptions got to be so popular. For example, if you were out pillaging another medieval village a simple chastity belt could keep YOUR daughters’ safe while you were busy.
Since my husband and I don’t have any metallurgy skills nor do we live in a medieval village, we have decided to utilize the 21st century equivalent of the chastity belt…ORTHODONTIA. To still be in braces as a 15 year old is humiliating beyond belief. Even raging hormones cannot override the buzz kill of braces.
So we asked the orthodontist to keep the braces on for a couple extra months. Does that make us bad parents? On the contrary. There is nothing like a mouthful of metal to say “Keep out! This girl is jailbait!”
I’ve been told that the Costa Rican culture is very protective of children and that everyone there will be watching out for my daughter’s safety.
That’s all very nice, but as a parent I think it will be mucho mejor to keep the braces on through the end of summer.
