mama and bubba.

and when i woke up, there was a chicken on my shoulder.

let me tell you about mama and bubba. incidentally, that is what i happen to call my mother and brother, but mama and bubba that i am referring to in this story lived in one of the poorest parts of mexico.

my youth group at church growing up usually took a mission trip every summer, i was fortunate to go on most all of these and have some life lessons that formed me into the person that i am today. from seeing erica, a little girl that had been beaten and left for dead by her father, smile for the first time to building one room, dirt floor houses that made the families feel like royalty. life lessons that i still think about often.

on one particular year, we stayed with the families. instead of the previous year, when all the gals stayed in one place and the guys in another. the year we had to use the bathroom in a bucket and were vandalized in the middle of the night. this year, we stayed with the families. my friend and i were chosen to stay with mama and bubba. don't ask me their names, they were mama and bubba. mama was a little old lady of about seventy, she looked much older. life had been hard on her. and her son bubba, was a whipper-snapper, handsome, hunka-hunka...or so he thought, probably close to thirty, i would say.

they lived together in a two room house. complete with dirt floors, an outhouse, roosters and chickens (in the house) and every LARGE ELECTRONIC known to man. i kid you not. in the bed room where bubba slept, there was an entire wall full of large speakers, nice radio equipment and a massive tv. let's remember the floor is dirt and they have no running water. not sure where bubba got his goods, but i sure didn't ask any questions.

my friend and i slept in the kitchen and shared a twin bed. the first night i had a hard time going to sleep, odd man in the house and live poultry walking around, but eventually sleep won. and early in the morning, i felt something itching my shoulder, and when i lifted my arm to scratch...there. on my shoulder. stood the homeliest little chicken. you have ever seen. i swatted at it, scared for my life! because you know chickens WILL kill you.... lawsy mercy.

mama had gone out and when she returned, she made us breakfast of chocolate milk and some kind of mystery meat in a tortilla shell. as we were eating, i asked her in my broken-southern-struggling-spanish what it was. she promptly smiled with glee, and stuck her tongue out and pointed to it and then OINKED several times. as i gulped and started to vomit in my mouth...with all the composure i could muster, i said, "ohhhh pig tongue, pointing to my tongue and OINKING as well." she said "si, si!"

i took a large drink of her delicious chocolate milk and excused myself to the outhouse.