members to bond. Personally, I haven’t had a lot of those moments mostly due to the fact that
almost all of my family lives in Chicago. I haven’t had many of those picture perfect family
Christmas but I have had a few memorable ones with a crazy group of Chicagoans I call my
family.
It was three years ago, that I had my first Christmas with my family. I still didn’t know
most of the people they call “family”. The only reason I was talking to them was because my
parents told me they were family so I gave it a shot. The night of Christmas Eve (the day we
arrived in Chicago) was the traditional unimportant chit chat. The usual questions about …show more content…
I was really hurt. It wasn’t their place
to say I need to know Spanish. They didn’t even speak it! After taking almost five minutes of
being yelled at I snapped back telling them “I live in America and the language we speak is
English and that is language I choose to speak so if you’re going to get mad at me because I
don’t know another language, I’m just telling you right now I don’t care”. After I said it I knew I
was in big trouble. The room stood still and no one moved. The other children gave me a look of
approval while the adults (except my parents) gave me a look of distraught. My parents gave me
a look of disgust, I could see my dad mouthing the words “you’re dead” .The room was still
silent and still in awe of what just happened and to be completely honest I had no idea I was even
capable of snapping like that until I did. Once the chit chat continued I choose to stay, mostly
due to the fact that my dad had the “I’m getting ready to kill you” face on and I knew that if I left
the table I knew he would take advantage of the opportunity. After avoiding my punishment …show more content…
At this point I was
freaking out, I was almost certain that I was going to die but I didn’t. I looked at my dad and all
the sudden his frown went away, he was no longer grinding his teeth but without a word he was
just standing in the middle of the room. Not knowing his plan to yell at me so I decided to ask
“what’s up?” I said in a confused tone, he looked at me and said “Brendan, I’m proud of you.
You stood up for what you believed in, and I agree with you, if you live in America you should
speak the language of the country, now granted knowing another language always helps but none
the less I think you did the right thing.” Just like that he stood up and walked out. I was in awe of
what just happened, I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. At this point I was just
sitting in the bedroom with a blank expression on my face wondering what just happened. I
thought of just sitting in the room until Christmas morning but after two minutes I got bored so I
decided to go outside and face my fears of dealing with the family that I just snapped at. As I
walked outside the first person I saw was my grandmother and to my surprise she wasn’t