Why you should always watch what you say...

Alicia, the kids, and I were at the park and I was watching the kids play on the playground. As I walked by a bench where a kid and his mom were sitting, I thought I heard the boy call me a really offensive name. The interesting thing was that it was not English, it was Serbian. I quickly looked at the boy and he just smiled. After all, how could I have possibly understood what he said to me?

I told Alicia and her sister, Carrie, what had happened, and, wanting to get to the bottom of it, we followed him and his mom over to the swings. Carrie asked the mom where they were from. She obviously didn't understand Carrie, so I asked her in Serbian. The astonishment in the son's face was classic.

It turns out that they were from Yugoslavia, and had been living in Bountiful for a year. We talked for a while, and I asked the kids about school and stuff. It's amazing how quickly kids can learn a foreign language. The mom barely gets along, yet the kids are completely fluent in English after just one year. It's sad that the situation in countries around the world are so bad that people will sacrifice everything to come and work at a laundromat just to be able to put food on the table.

What's the moral of the story...? Always watch what you say, even when you are "sure" nobody will be able to understand you.