I was really apprehensive about my parents coming to visit me in Spain for two weeks after hearing multiple parent-related horror stories from my friends. But thankfully my parents proved to be way cooler than I gave them credit for, and we had a really fun time together in Sevilla and Paris — but not without some “I want to disappear right now” moments, of course.
I wanted my parents to see my favorite, free flamenco restaurant across the river, but my roommate and her boyfriend had gotten food poisoning there a week earlier, so clearly we weren’t going to eat there. The family that pukes together may stay together (in the bathroom) but would not have much fun in Paris. So we arbitrarily picked a cute tapas bar around the corner from flamenco and, as usual, my mom and I ordered a pitcher of sangria to share. My mom is a total lightweight, so usually she gets a little tipsy after three glasses of sangria, but it usually wear off pretty quickly. However, this restaurant added some unexpected punch to their sangria. I ordered (in Spanish) at the bar, and then we sat and waited, watching people who arrived after us get their drinks. I thought they were being anti-American, which annoyed me, since even though my Spanish isn’t perfect, at least I wasn’t a typical American tourist expecting them to speak English.
But then I noticed a bartender pouring about five different liquors (including something that looked suspiciously like whisky) into a pitcher, but that couldn’t be our sangria. Sangria usually just has wine, soda and one liquor in it. But then he put the jar on the bar and motioned to me. So I thought I must have been mistaken about the liquors. I took a sip and knew immediately that I had the most liquored-up sangria in Spain. It tasted great, but I could tell I might get a little loopy, and we’d have to drag my mom home if we finished it. My dad tasted it and agreed. But of course we couldn’t let good sangria go to waste, so we finished it with gusto and made our way over to the flamenco restaurant.
We had to order food to sit at the prime tables next to the stage, and my dad decided it was a good idea to order a bottle of wine instead of food. We eventually ordered some bread, cheese and olives, but it was already too late for my mom. She’s naturally a very ebullient person, so she doesn’t really change when she drinks, she just gets louder. She made friends with the whole table next to us, learned how to say olives in Spanish (she ordered them while I was in the bathroom, and was quite proud of herself the rest of the night, saying “aceitunas” over and over), completely died laughing — and snorting — when she mixed up Rossellini (an Italian filmmaker on a test I had been talking about), Rossini (the Italian composer of the Barber of Seville) and Mussolini (the Italian dictator), and discovered her natural affinity for yelling, “Olé!” during flamenco. She was pretty fun, and the flamenco was great.
I’m used to my snorting, olé-ing mom, so she no longer can embarrass me, regardless of how boisterous she gets. My dad on the other hand proved that he still has the ability to make me want to apparate away on the spot. As we were leaving the bar looking for a cab, my dad pointed at my giggling mom and asked me, “She’s fun when she’s like this, isn’t she? Do you think she’ll go home and sleep with me?” I had a moment of whiskey-sangria befuddled panic, until I brilliantly responded, “She definitely had enough to drink that she’ll sleep with no problem!” Phew, sex reference ignored. Until my dad either ignored my mortification or didn’t hear me, and mused, “Well we have twin beds. That won’t work.” Ah! I promptly got in a cab and didn’t look back.
Of course I couldn’t send my parents back to the U.S. without another awkward sex moment with my dad, although the second time wasn’t his fault. We were in Paris attempting to buy metro tickets, and my dad was using his fake French to ask about the cheapest option at the info desk. I was standing off to the side because the only French words are either from Lady Marmalade, aren’t appropriate, or relate to the necessary French food groups: bread, cheese and chocolate.
The info desk guy started good-naturedly messing with my dad, telling him that of course he speaks English, but since my dad speaks “un peu” French, they should talk in French. Of course he was joking, and I couldn’t stop laughing at my dad’s bewildered stare and stammering, but then when my dad didn’t have the correct change, the man told him that he would have to leave me instead. We both knew he was joking this time, so we laughed and waited for him to give my dad change. But then he told my dad that he was kidding (I certainly hope I’m worth more than 20 cents), but that he seriously was hot for me. I’m just going to assume he didn’t know how awkward that is to say to someone’s dad in English. But I still ran away.
The third most memorable moment with my parents has nothing to do with sex, thank goodness. My uncle who lives in Paris had warned us about the gypsy children who are lightening fast and frequent touristy areas to pickpocket naïve tourists. I’d already been robbed in Sevilla, so I was extra cautious everywhere in Paris. My parents were joking about my stolen wallet one day as we walked away from the Eiffel Tower along the Seine. That’s about as touristy as it gets, but I was clutching my bag so tightly that not even an ant could get into it. Unless I got straight-on attacked, of course. We walked past a group of kids around my age when one of them shrieked and hurdled towards me, jumping on me. As soon as she faced me, I immediately recognized my friend Shelby, who was in Paris for her birthday. Apparently my dad did not recognize her (he’d only met her once), and was only milliseconds away from popping her in the face, thinking she was a gypsy child taking a much more direct approach to mugging me. Thankfully, he resisted when he saw me hug her back, but I’m torn between horror and hilarity when I imagine my dad taking out my 5’2” friend in Paris on her 21st birthday. Hopefully his French would have been good enough for him to explain his reasoning to the French police that the other tourists inevitably would have called.
Apart from some uncomfortable sex references (my parents were fascinated by the condom dispenser on the outside of a building on our block in Paris), and my dad almost beating up one of my good friends, I really enjoyed hanging out with my parents. As I get older, I realize more and more how cool they are. Or maybe I’m just just getting weirder. But the fact that they fed me with tapas, sangria and pan au chocolat for two weeks didn’t hurt their coolness factor.
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