For the San Francisco Chronicle, Jeff Yang writes about the increasingly popular blogs, including mymomisafob.com, devoted to the offbeat sayings of immigrant Asian parents. He recalls a conversation with his Chinese mother-in-law, who told him, “Next time you go shopping, make sure you buy okeni. Okeni is good for you!”
Having no idea what “okeni” meant, Yang did some research (and learned the “singularly useless fact that Okeni is a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”) What was his mother-in-law saying? “My mother asked you to remember to buy organic,” his wife finally explained.
How can we not relate? For years, my mom would say, “In my eye” before stating an opinion. I always thought she had something in her eye. I later learned that “in my eye” was her way of saying, “in my point of view.” Then, there’s just the flat-out hilarious ways she expresses herself in English. She once came to visit me and saw a black widow in my windowsill. “We have to kill it,” she noted. “It’s too big now, too fat from juice, too much poison juice!”
What are some endearing—or flat-out funny—examples of your parents FOB-ing out?
