I’ve flown out to visit a friend in northern Quebec, which is fairly exciting for me as I’ve never been so far out of country and never to an area where English isn’t the primary language. In preparation for this, I made sure to get a good chunk of spending money, with the intention of coming back with exactly none of it. If only I’d known the fight I was in for!

The first day there, my friend sees to it that I don’t pay for the tickets to any sites we visit. We stop at a restaurant in the afternoon and, when I go to pay, I find that my friend’s mom has already gotten up and covered the bill! I frowned dramatically at my friend and she just smiled innocently.

The next day, more of the same and I start playfully pouting, as they’ve both now started using the fact that I need their help translating for me to sneak in payment before I can get to it. At one point I ended up shouting, “Let me spend my money, damnit!!” To which my friend laughed and said, “NEVER!!!”

Finally, we end up going to a zoo and, while I don’t manage to buy my own ticket, we eventually make it to the gift shop. I go full tourist and start picking out nitnacks for myself and presents for other friends, side-eyeing my friend the entire time. The monster has the audacity to smile blithely at me. I ask if I’m allowed to buy my own stuff here, or if she’s going to snipe me again. She just smiles again and tells me to go wild, to which I shout, “Finally!” and load up the counter.

Later on, we took a day trip to a lovely rock formation (I was literally woken up with the question, “Do you wanna go see a ROCK today?!” Three hours on the road later and it turns out I did, in fact, want to see the rock. It was a very nice rock.) and we drop by one of the little village stores where the owner is sorting through a pile of raw jasper she’d just collected. I asked her how much she would charge for some of it, as I love raw gemstones, and she just dumped the whole lot into a box and gave it to me!

I ended up coming back with hundreds of dollars of spending money still in my wallet as it seemed that, even when I try my hardest to be a tourist and buy overpriced guff, I’m clearly not able to!

My daughter is six and enjoys an animated show about a young girl who lives with her Inuit family in Alaska. The show blends the girl’s cultural traditions with 21st century life and often uses words in Gwich’in, the tribe’s native language. My daughter has picked up a few of the easy ones. We also spend a lot of time talking about the culture portrayed in the show. I love the culture and diversity it exposes my daughter to as we live in a very homogeneous area.

On this day, we are in a grocery store where children can get a free balloon at check out. We are chatting with the cashier and as I pay, she asks if my daughter would like a balloon. I tell her of course and she offers her one. Daughter beams at her at says “Mahsi’ Choo” (pronounced mah-see cho, means thank you).

Out of nowhere, a woman I hadn’t even noticed behind us snaps, “You should teach your brat to speak English! This is America!”

I frostily reply she’s using a word she learned from a children’s show about a native tribe in Alaska. My daughter jumps in, “It’s called [Show name] and they teach us new words and fun stuff about people who are different from me. And my mama teaches me to be kind and not call people names.”

Immediately the cashier replies, “And that’s why you and your mama each get another balloon.”

We left with three balloons and I could not have been more proud of my daughter or pleased with that cashier.

I’m shopping and looking at some fruits and vegetables when another customer is repeating over and over “For sure, that won’t be (not my name).” After a while, it gets quite irritating and I’m annoyed at (not my name) for not reacting. It is then that I realize three things:
1/ I’m shopping in an area where my mothers relatives live,
2/ I’m often been told that, despite some big differences such as long and short hair, I’m very much alike my youngest aunt, only six year my senior,
3/ my aunt is called (not my name)

Before they can repeat “For sure, that won’t be (not my name).” for the umpteenth time, I turn and tell them I’m not (not my name) but the eldest of (mum). The customer and her companion hurried away.

I checked later and it turns out, both customers were probably family but family relations on that side are a bit complicated with two step relations in different generations (all before me) and for some of the step relations, my generation isn’t really family which is probably why they removed themselves so quickly.

It’s the early eighties and we’re living in a flat while our house, which was damaged in an earthquake, is being rebuilt. We used to hang our laundry on a line in the yard but here we only have a balcony.
One day, my mother spots a rusty, wobbly drying rack left out on the sidewalk for the garbage collectors. Under the cover of night she carries it home, removes as much rust as she can with a wire brush and sandpaper and wraps plastic strips cut from cookie bags around the wires, so that the rust won’t stain the laundry (a coat of fresh paint being outside her area of expertise).
The somewhat-refurbished drying rack remains in service with us for some ten years, our financial situation improves, and my mother finally treats herself to a new, stainless, lightweight aluminium drying rack.
Thus the old one is left out on the sidewalk for the garbage collectors… and during the night, it disappears!

We have a regular customer who is an avid gardener and grows many of his own vegetables.

He has requested a tube of haemerrhoid cream and I am processing the sale as he makes small talk with the pharmacist.

Customer: “Yeah, so I put my tomatoes on the dinner table under the heat lamp.”

It took me a few long, horrified moments to realise that he’d changed topic and was no longer talking about his haemerrhoids, but his gardening instead.

After the customer had left I started laughing and I shared the misunderstanding with the pharmacist who found it as funny as I did.