Chistes

A good Super Bowl commercial has to be funny.

There’s good reason for that. Humor is the quickest way to establish a connection. Sharing a good laugh does wonders for the soul. In early recovery, my best nights involved slapstick movies, Dairy Queen, and fellowship. I had no idea that just being sober in itself was fun. It beat all the drunken oblivious laughter I knew in my former life.

I witnessed the strong and quick bonding power of humor at our city’s 48-hour film festival. Filmmakers had two days to put together a short film. The films had a different genre to emulate, yet nearly each one gravitated toward comedy. The experienced filmmakers knew that humor was the quickest way to get a vote from the audience.

This, the power of humor, might explain how Diego, our summer foster child, has rooted so deep in our heart so fast.

Our meeting him wasn’t a thirty second TV spot, don’t get me wrong.

There wasn’t much laughter at the outset. Understandably, an 11-year old Colombian orphan does not feel his full humorous self after his first international flight to a foreign country to live with complete strangers.

It was July 4th when all of us were in the car on the way to fireworks that the laughter began to roll.

“Tengo chistes,” he said, enthusiasm sparking from his eyes.

“Tienes que?” I knew tengo means I have, but I had never heard the word chistes (jokes) before. Diego quickly taught me that while my three month mobile app crash course of textbook Spanish was helpful, it would by no means prepare me for his South American dialect.

“Chistes. Muchos chistes.”

“What are those?” I asked my wife.

“No clue. Look it up.”

Chistes, I thought. Sounds like cheese steaks, let’s see. When I couldn’t discover his meaning on my phone (the Google Translate word for jokes in Spanish is bromas) I gave the phone to Diego.

Fifteen minutes later, while parking to get in view of the display, I was wondering why it was taking him so long to spell the word chistes. When he gave me the phone, I saw he typed a lengthy paragraph in Spanish about a man who boarded a plane and asked the pilot for something indecipherable by Google.

“No sey,” I was forced to tell him. “I don’t know.”

Thankfully, stepping out of the car we bumped into our friend from Mexico, who was able to give Diego an audience.

Diego had my friend Wences in stitches. So the kid is funny I thought. Wences walked with us to the church lawn to watch the fireworks. Diego had him laughing all the way. Wences tried to trick him by asking Diego to answer “Chicheron” to every question he asked that night. Our little joke-master never responded to Wences with any other word, even when parting later that night after the show.

Diego has such good humor that the greatest accomplishment of my bi-lingual foster parenting stint has been comprehending my first Spanish joke.

He kept it simple.

“Sabes un chiste con tampoco yo?”

“No,” I said.

“Tampoco yo!”

I knew what he asked: “Do you know the joke about neither do I?”

So when I said, “No,” he said, “Neither do I!”

I laughed with him for a good while, longer than your typical nervous chuckle or sarcastic guffaw. It was a gut laugh. Diaphragmatic. Good stuff, I thought.

Ever since then, the laughter has been rolling. Even my daughter, whose only Spanish is a delightfully emphatic “Uno!” has told me, “Diego is so funny, Daddy.”

“Yes he is, sweetheart. Yes he is.”

I now know that whenever I tell him, “No,” that while he will listen, I will get a “Tampoco yo!” in return. I also know that when he asks me in Spanish, “Look!” and points to something, it is usually followed by, “My finger!” as he asks me to look literally at his finger. I never imagined that the quickest route to the soul of my summer foster child would be “Chicharron” (fried pork rinds) but then again, you don’t sign up for adventures like these—ahem, sobriety!—to get the things you expect. You get sober or foster a child or try something scary to move beyond the four walls of your expectation altogether.

It may have been his sense of humor that gave us a window into his soul, but Diego’s most enduring quality is his heart. Accordingly, I will leave you with this mundane miracle, care of Juan Diego:

Ev and Diego are biking up the sidewalk as I walk behind them. The long row of townhouses in between the park and our car are to our right. Diego is mature enough to handle directions I give. “Stay together. Juntos. Don’t cross the street without me.” So there he is, atop the long hill, waiting for me before crossing the street on his bike.

On my way up, I am stopped by two women who are looking for the model condo to view for purchase. I tell them I have no idea and that I was sorry because the sun was beating us down and it was a huge development they had to search through.

A few minutes later when I am atop the hill with Everett and Diego, I see it. The model condo for viewing, pumping its air conditioning through the open door like an unexpected mountain breeze.

I looked down the hill, to where two ladies were about to turn the bend and disappear into the scorching concrete valley below. I scream down to them. Nothing.

Diego, while he speaks very little English, quickly discerns the problem.

“Yo? Yo? Yo?”

“Si! Si!”

I tell him to say, “It’s here it’s here!” and to point to me. Thankfully he doesn’t make a joke about fingers. Instead, he grips his handlebars and races down the hill.

Soon after, I see Diego, lumbering on his one-speed the quarter mile back uphill to me, and not long after, the two ladies he saved from getting lost in the heat appear, walking toward the right direction.

I look up on Google how you say, “Hero” in Spanish. Diego laughs.