The Melting Pot

Even though my parents had just come to this country when I was born I don't ever recall them ever speaking anything but English to my sister and I. As a matter of fact, I don't speak a word of Hungarian. Although we were exposed to aspects of Hungarian culture from time to time it was definitely not the dominant culture in our home. We were American.

I'm going to get on my soapbox here:
For the life of me, I don't understand people that come to this country because their homeland sucked but then they try to create an environment that is exactly like what they left behind only without the sucking part. It doesn't work that way. If you're not willing to embrace a society's language and culture you shouldn't expect to get the benefits.
Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't make an effort to accommodate cultural diversity. (Or that people need to completely abandon their native cultures.) It obviously takes time to adapt and (as the child of immigrant parents) I believe we need to be generous, sympathetic and supportive of those who are struggling to make that transition. I'm just saying that if your family has been here for 3 generations and English is still your second language don't complain about cultural bias, OK?
And I'm back off the soapbox...

But despite my parents best efforts there were still 'issues'.

First off - I've never been able to understand the 'tattletale' thing. I mean, we tell kids over and over not to tattle, then when a crime is committed and no witnesses come forward everyone acts all surprised. Well, duh... What part of "don't tattle" did you not understand?? In most civilized countries being a tattletale is not just considered a good idea, it's the law. And we wonder why our crime rate is so high...

Next - I really didn't intend to blog about this but one of my daughters asked me to, so here goes:
My mom had no clue what the colloquial terms for the 'naughty bits' were so she made some up. Imagine my surprise when I started school and discovered that nobody knew what a "putch putch" or a "popochee" was. (That would be my genitalia and nether region respectively.) We even had a little song to request a 'butt cleaning'. It was set to the tune of "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!". The words were "Mommy! Mommy! Clean my popochee!" If we had company over we didn't actually sing the words - just humming the tune was sufficient.

My sister and I never spoke with accents and my parents never lost theirs. Both of their accents were as strong when they passed away as they were when I was a child.
And I would be remiss if I covered this topic without mentioning my mother's tendency to get words mixed up. She usually referred to the microwave oven as the 'rototiller' and a strainer as a 'calendar'. (We knew what she meant.)
And she told everyone my sister and I were 'genies' (geniuses - the jury is still out on me). And then there was her accent - we never stopped teasing her about it (especially when she said "third" - it came out "turd"). Good times :-)

But my whole point here is that my parents loved and believed in this country. It was a dream fulfilled and they didn't want their children to be 'culturally hyphenated'. They raised us to be Americans. And I couldn't be more proud ... or more grateful.