10 Words That = 3 Special Little Words

There are a few blogs that I regularly drop by to read their latest posts. One lady recently wrote a post titled “Three Little Words”. Her conversation with her husband got me thinking about the way I speak to M. Everyday when M goes to work or leaves to go somewhere else, I say to him, “Be careful when you cross the road. Don’t get mugged.” There, those are my 10 special words that are suppose to mean “I love you”. I didn’t think they were anything unusual until around 4 1/2 years ago. I was on the phone to M when a certain little vegemite was eavesdropping right next to me. This little vegemite decided to copy my words as part of a conversation she made up for her dollies and this time her mum overheard and freaked out. The little vegemite told her that I said it on the phone and her mum called right away to see if we were alright. LOL.

These days I do try to say “I love you” when I remember to but it just doesn’t sound right. LOL. It’s like using the F words. They just don’t seem to ‘fit’ me. In fact the F words were so amusing to M that he nearly crashed the car when I first used it in his presence. LOL. When M learned how to say “I love you” in Mandarin (Chinese), I laughed like mad at first but later I found it somewhat off-putting. There is just no point for him to say it in any other language that I speak. When it is coming from him, “I love you” is fine in English. When it is coming from me, the ten words I mentioned above sound more natural than the 3 special little words in English.

M is okay about the way I speak. He sometimes jokes that some of my vocabulary is uniquely me and only he and I could understand the meaning of it. LOL. Over the years, he has begun to understand things from my perspective. He is slowly learning that the words that come out of my mouth may be English but the usage is still sometimes influenced by my culture or my upbringing. Recently though I have begun wondering if the way I speak has anything to do with a condition I have. That’s something I would like to look deeper into. One of the many beauties of being in an inter-racial relationship is that there is just so much more to learn from each other. Just when you think that we humans share so many similarities another thing pops up reminding us of our differences.