Advocate

by | Jul 4, 2012

Advocate
Here at chez Rounds dinner is a routine affair. This stems largely from the finicky eating habits of the elder indigent boarder. Tonight we had black beans with rice. It’s his favorite. The younger favors split pea soup, again with rice. That’s right, I’m raising hippies.
After we chanted blessings to the goddess, I was just about to dig in when the boss remembered a very ripe avocado in the other room. Luckily, the boarders hate avocado. This means we don’t need to share. The boss split it open and handed me half.
“Avo for egg right?” I’m a great conversation starter.
“Not in Spanish.”
“But they’re from Mexico and they look like eggs.”
So much for my mansplaining. Obviously this called for the internet.
It turns out I was not wrong on the Mexico part. I thought maybe avo meant egg in an Aztec language. Wrong again smiley, the original word was ahuacate meaning “testicle” in Nahuatl (an Aztec language). When the California growers wanted to market avocados, they felt the word was too difficullt to pronounce and refered to a portion of the anatomy they didn’t want to talk about at the dinner tabel, so they changed it (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5563805). Avocado is much closer to the Spanish word for lawyer “abogado.” I mean no disrespect to lawyers, testicles, or avocados.

Here at chez Rounds dinner is a routine affair. This stems largely from the finicky eating habits of the elder indigent boarder. Tonight we had black beans with rice. It’s his favorite. The younger favors split pea soup, again with rice. That’s right, I’m raising hippies.

After we chanted blessings to the goddess, I was just about to dig in when the boss remembered a very ripe avocado in the other room. Luckily, the boarders hate avocado. This means we don’t need to share. The boss split it open and handed me half.

“Avo for egg right?” I’m a great conversation starter.

“Not in Spanish.” So she speaks Spanish now too.

“But they’re from Mexico and they look like eggs.” So much for my mansplaining. Obviously this called for the internet.

It turns out I was not wrong on the Mexico part. I thought maybe “avo” meant egg in an Aztec language. Wrong again smiley, the original word was ahuacate meaning “testicle” in Nahuatl (an Aztec language). When the California growers wanted to market avocados, they felt the word was too difficullt to pronounce and refered to a portion of the anatomy they didn’t want to talk about at the dinner table, so they changed it (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5563805). Avocado is much closer to the Spanish word for lawyer, “abogado.” I mean no disrespect to lawyers, testicles, or avocados.