ESL

Being that English was my second language and people always made fun of my language skills when I was little I figured I had to speak better then everyone around me. I started by trying to learn proper grammar. I quickly learned to say things like, this is she, when people asked to talk to Lupe on the phone. My second hill to climb was to pronounce things correctly. This was hard growing up in a Spanish speaking home where my mom didn’t speak English and where all my school friends came from immigrant parents. In 6th grade I had this teacher who would poke fun of the students who mispronounced words. By then I was trying to speak without an accent with a vengeance. Finally I had to enlarge my vocabulary. The only way I knew that my vocabulary could grow was through reading. I loved books but my favorite book was a dictionary. Every time I came across an unknown word Mr. Dictionary would come out and I’d learn how to pronounce it and what it meant. By the time I got to high school my friends would pay me money to pretend to be their parents and call the school to say they would be out on days we felt like cutting.
When I grew up and became a social worker the way I spoke became a negative once more. Instead of being accepted by my clients they were very weary of me. When they didn’t think I could hear them they would call me ‘white girl’. Once more I had to learn how to speak to be accepted by those I was serving. I had to learn how to speak ‘ghetto’ or as they would say ‘you just don’t know how to talk black’. The day that I broke was when one of my white clients called me white girl. When I explained to her that I was Hispanic and she was white everyone laughed and said no she’s black. I got it that day it was the willingness to accept them and to be open to them. Once again I had to learn how to speak. Quickly I learned new terminology to understand and to be understood by my clients. I learned that I had to use the same practices I used when I was younger when I learn a new word I have to immediately start using it. Yesterday a new word was given to me by a friend: Benefitship.
Benefitship: A particular type of connection existing between people to help or aide one another sexually.
Now come on people we’ve all been in them! We have different names for them but we’ve all had one before. You know that friend when you need some loving without any of the commitment. I recently got out of one myself. He was once a friend who turned to a benefit and then turned to someone who made me detest myself. So what do you do when you end a benefitship? You learn to live without it and when you can’t handle it you find someone to snuggle with while watching MIB, after sitting in the hot tub for awhile. Is there a word for benefits without a relationship?