Phunnie Phamilee

This was in the latest installments of emails my mom has send to the family as she spends her time basking in the aura of holiness. She's recently departed to Euroland where she will be pilgrimage (pronounced pil-gri-mauge in Ye Old English. Thanks Chaucer!) to Catholic holy sites. The Ground Zero Mosque if you will. (just kidding. too soon?) Anyways, this is the following message:

we went to a lot of places in Rome. om taook a bus ride at a middle of the night / me. we kissed a lot of saint bones and Jesus stuff, touching the holly things.

took a lot of pics. mom has a good time w/ bunch of her oldies.

bye for now.

Love u all,

Le

Why was it, that one fateful day, my TA asked if I was born in a different country and that my misspellings and grammatical errors were common to those in her ESL classes? Dunno. Can't be because of my mom because she's obviously a Nobel Peace Prize winner in writing. But it was an entertaining thing to read. 

What I like most about my mom is that she's funny on accident and on purpose. She also likes attention. I am my mom. 

She's also good with remembering good stories. Here's one for the Annie chronicles. 

"Once, we got our airline tickets when you were about 4 or 5 and you were looking at them with your dad. Your father showed you the first ticket and pointed to the name. You correctly answered, "Annie Tran". Impressed, you dad showed you the next ticket. He, again, pointed to the name and asked you to read it. You exclaimed, "Tuan Tran"! At this point, he was really excited. "A CHILD PRODIGY! MY CHILD IS GOING TO BE A GENIUS!" Then the moment of truth. 

dad - "Annie, what does this say?" pointing to the name of the 3rd and final ticket

annie - "Mom Tran!"

The hopes and dreams of this father for his daughter came to a crashing end. She's not going to go to Harvard. She's not going to be really good at chess. She won't acquire the ability to play piano arpeggios with her back facing the keys. Or do a no handed triple somersault. She was not meant to be a child prodigy of any kind.

I was born to sound and write like a fob. Awesome.