Monday, December 15, 2008

The Anatomy Lesson

My mother’s family is Lebanese. When we were growing up, that meant two things to “the kids.” First, we had lots of great food. Second, when our parents didn’t want us to know what they were talking about, they spoke Arabic.

It’s difficult to render in English some of the words we learned. Arabic is a much more musical language than English. “God willing” is “Uzzha Allahruud.” Uzzha has the u-sound like ‘up’ and the zzha sounds like ‘Zsa Zsa,’ as in Gabor. Allahruud starts with the same ‘up’ sound, and you have to kind of roll the r into the uud, kind of like you’re saying “rood.” I know a few more words in Arabic, but aside from the words for grandmother and grandfather, nothing you’d use in polite company.

Then there’s the Z-word, Zubra. We learned the word when I was in college, and started calling each other zubra all the time. My brother David became the Big Zubra, and Ronnie became the Little Zubra. It was a convenient and stealthy way to call each other dicks without anyone else knowing what we were saying.

The anatomy lesson came the day before I graduated from college. David showed up at my fraternity house on the morning of the day before graduation. He came with my brother Michael and his friend Mitch. They had my friend’s pickup truck; the plan was for Michael and Mitch to go to Dickinson, my college, get my belongings, and return home. They were to leave David with me. We would later be joined by my mother, Ronnie, and her two sisters, Aunt Phil and Aunt Esther. The Aunts, as they are known to the entire family, are textbook maiden aunts. They love the hell out of all their nieces and nephews, but they also have high standards for us. They found it hard to tolerate any sort of misbehavior, and have, I think, lived their entire lives believing sex is dirty and disgusting. All the time, not only when you’re doing it right, as Woody Allen put it. They therefore didn’t like us throwing the Z-word around.

Aunt Esther, now retired, took up one of the three options that were available to women who grew up at the time she did. She became a nurse. The other options were teaching and the convent. She eventually ended up teaching at the nursing school of a nearby hospital and taught religion for her parish’s Confraternity of Christian Doctrine program. That’s about as close to the Trifecta as you can come.

Aunt Phil had a number of administrative/clerical jobs and was the family enforcer. When we were kids, we were all terrified of her. She was our parents’ ultimate threat. Whenever we’d start to get out of line, somebody’s mom or dad would order us to straighten up or they’d send in Aunt Phil. After that, you could hear a pin drop.

To get back to the story, the afternoon before graduation, my mother, the Aunts, and Ronnie showed up to my fraternity-house room. Ronnie was wearing a jacket his team had been awarded for winning the Pop Warner football championship. Like all little brothers, Ronnie was terrible for stealing my clothes. His two rationalizations were a) “I never see you wearing it,” (Of course not. I’m usually 200 miles away at college). And b) “It fits me good,” as if that entitled him to have it. I once tried walking into a department store and leaving with a Hart Shaffner & Marx suit. I was all prepared with the “It fits me good,” argument. I made it out of the store. The suit didn’t.

I remarked on how nice the jacket was, and tried it on. I turned to David and said, “Look, Zu, it fits me good.” Ronnie kind of smiled, but my mother and the Aunts just looked disgusted. It was such a pleasure to see my brothers that we carried on in our usual manner for much of the time, annoying the Aunts, and my mother, who tended to be much less tolerant of us when her sisters were around. We were scheduled to go to dinner that evening with my then girlfriend, but David didn’t have a belt to wear. I don’t know why it was so important, but we had to get him a belt. As I drove to the J.C. Penney store at a mall in Carlisle, Pennyslvania, David and Ronnie were giving each other their usual hard time.

By this point, the patience of the three women in the car was just about gone. The final straw came when one of them punched the other on the arm and drew the response, “You zubra!” That was too much for Aunt Esther. “You boys! You use that word, zubra, and you don’t even know what it means.” Obviously, she was angry, because otherwise she would have known this was exactly the wrong thing to say to David.

“So tell me, Aunt Esther, what does it mean?”

“That’s your penis and your scrotum.”

I almost wrecked the car. Even my mother laughed.

We eventually made it to dinner, and Ronnie and David were well behaved throughout the meal, probably out of fear. My mother and the Aunts were charming. My girlfriend passed inspection; she and I eventually went our separate ways.

I’ll never forget how and when I found out the true meaning of the Z-word. Someday, I’ll pass that bit of knowledge on to my brothers’ boys. After all, what are uncles for?