America

Sometime in 1999, my family moved to the US.  I was 9 yrs old at that time. I am an Albanian from Montenegro, former Yugoslavia. In our culture, as a sign of respect, the children will not speak back to the parents.  It is frowned upon and its severely punished. When we came to America, i had to stay with my uncle, in Queens, for a while.  My second day here I saw a young boy speak back to his parents.  I asked my cousin, who was around 12 years old, what happened, and she told me that kids can talk back to their parents because parents can't hit their children. So one Thursday night, there were some guest over my cousins house.  After dinner I started to watch WWF Smackdown.  At around 9pm, i usually went to sleep because I had to wake up at 6am for school.  But i really wanted to watch the final match, which came on around 9:45pm, I wanted to watch Stone Cold Steve Austin fight The Rock. But my mother was not hearing it, she started bugging me around 9. Fifteen minutes later she had enough of my "Huh? I can't hear u" game so she got aggressive.  It was time, I had to try it out, talk back to my mom.  I stood up and i told her "Hell NO!" and proceeded to do the DX chant.  She didn't understand what "Hell NO!" meant but when she saw me do the chant she got angry.  For the people that don't know the chant, it goes something like this.  The guys stand in a row, raise their hands in the air and bring them down, crossing them by their crotches, and they proceed to do this at least 5 times in a row. That pissed her off.  She grabbed me by my sideburn and dragged me to the room.  For a lack of better words, she whooped my ass!!!  That was my first recognition of the differences in the two cultures.  But i love my parents for the tough love.  To this day I watch my tone and choice of words around my parents.