I said "good morning" to the mailman--at 1:30 in the afternoon! OK, I guess that's not that bad, but I was all discombobulated for, like, 30 seconds.

I want to make sure I get it: Were you making a joke which insinuated that you (jokingly) believed the word "amigo" to be a swear in Spanish? Because that's how I'm interpreting it.

Oh man, I've been doing this a lot lately, always with the same person. Somehow my thoughts and intentions don't manage to match up with the words that come out of my mouth. And then I make it worse trying to explain what I really wanted to say.

Yeah, that cross-cultural humor often falls completely flat.

Last semester at my library, we hired a student who is not from the U.S. to work at the circulation desk. One day he and I were both pushing book trucks on the main floor, and I joked that we should play chicken. Well, of course I instantly realized (TOO LATE) that this was an idiom that he probably did not know. His quizzical look confirmed this. I then spent some time flusteredly trying to explain the joke, then I worried for the rest of the afternoon that he thought I had made an inappropriate sexual reference. And for a few days, I had to endure the snort-giggles from my coworkers (who of course witnessed the whole incident) whenever I walked in the room.

Hee. Danf, I would have laughed. It's probably not your fault that the people you were working with couldn't keep up with you.

Well the kernel of the joke is how stupid white people can be, culturally.

But yeah, Citrusfreak, you "got" it.

But Latin America has great political jokes, better than ours, usually.

Oh well.

I had an embarrassing time when I referred to the whole group I was with as white and then realized I was the only white person there. They graciously ignored me.

A few weeks ago the four-year old called our two-year old neighbor "that brown girl" instead of by the child's name. I don't think he remembered her name, but it's kind of awkward when the mom is standing there and we're having a nice chat and your kid addresses their kid by their skin color. I tried too hard to correct my kid and I just looked like a dumbass.

Ever since the kids have learned about Martin Luther King Jr., slavery, and the civil rights movement at school, and at home, they are more aware of skin color. Before I never mentioned skin color. They never seemed to mention it. Now they notice when somebody's skin is a different color, which isn't bad or wrong, but it makes me uncomfortable for some reason when they do mention it. I'm quick to correct them to address people by their name, or even their gender, but not their race.