🍪 Considered Child Abuse
The fourth day waking up in Argentina, I was not yet in Buenos Aires at the time, I woke up in a new country with a slight shimmer of the sensation of how far I am from home. At the time there was no real internet to speak of and a land line call was the only consideration in your mind if you need to speak to family. I had seen and experienced so many strange new cultural norms on the first day. Only time would tell what the day would bring.
Susana put out cookies and mate cocido and I asked, "Did I oversleep or something? What is that?" She said, "I am desayudando" (I am breakfasting - literally translated).
Side note: Most people know about mate which is stuff that looks like grass yerba which is in a funny cup and they drink it with hot water out of a metal straw called a bombilla. Mate cocido is the same yerba which is sewn into a pouch, similar to tea bags. This is considered to be appropriate for kids if you put milk in it. Like I said earlier, there is a surprise around every corner and mate con leche (mate with milk) which is only for kids, is another one.
At the time, I thought it was tea with milk which I had seen British people drinking, but I have never tried it, but later I learned it was this mate stuff.
Well, I am an adult and I can eat ice cream for breakfast if I want to, or I could have cookies if I chose to, but I don't. I started to think she was a bit insane. I told her that when I was a kid, I asked if I could have cookies for breakfast one time and I was told in no uncertain terms that I could not by my mother.
The above image is the kind of cookies we had that day. The are thin crackers that are made of flour and lard, bizcochos, and they are coated on top with what looks like brown sugar and regular sugar.
Continuing our story... I said, "Kids don't get to eat those in the morning right?" She told me that all kids have the option to select cookies for breakfast. I said, "That's child abuse!" She was very upset with me because in Spanish, child abuse is presumed to be child sexual abuse. The rant she threw at me was ferocious and very unexpected. In The States, letting a child stay up past midnight is child abuse, meaning something that would not be good for the child, the same as locking them in their room - think Harry Potter - or worse, in a cage.
Anyway, she told me to use mal tratar (to treat badly) if I want to talk about allowing kids to do something they shouldn't. Good to know! That reaction was something I really would not care to experience again.
These little misunderstandings are normal when learning a new language. It's something that the machine language translation software was not able to help me to avoid back then. I think they are better now but I do not need them anymore, so I cannot comment on that really.
Well, that day I had eaten cookies for breakfast for the first time for breakfast, and not so many times since then really, but I learned that it is a strange but acceptable option when it occurs to me to have them.
The Inspiration for this Post
This morning, I went to get some cereal from the cabinet and found that we were out. Disappointed, I looked and saw some of these (photo above) in the cupboard and recalled that day that I am describing here, a quarter of a century ago, and it triggered me to make this post for you. I am not sure if children today are permitted to have sweets in the morning or not up in North America. I know that waffles and pancakes are somehow exempt from scrutiny, donuts as well. Either way, I am still surprised by things I see here but I am trying to start blogging about my experiences from the beginning.
➖➖ LA ARGENTINA = 💃 OR 🇦🇷 ➖➖ EL @ARGENTINO = 🕺 ➖➖
I will be continuing to highlight the differences I had noticed and which are good, bad, or indifferent as I blog here on Hive. Thanks for stopping in to hear my thoughts.
I am just a geek who spent half his life in the other land down under.
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