Excerpt:

Please note that, in the spirit of NaNo, that has not been edited. Yes, spelling and grammar problems do exist. At the moment, I do not care.

Cali and I sat on the floor of the living room, watching TV. Our parents had decided not long before this that we should become polyglots.
It was one of the few “education adventures,” they decided we should take that I actually agreed with. They thought education should come at least in part from the streets. As early as four I could remember my mom trying to convince local fruit stand owners to allow me to package fruit for customers.
“No, no senora,” they had said.
I wanted to know what that meant. My mom wouldn't stick around long enough to let me find out.
Learning other languages would be exciting, I had thought. An adventure, just as my parents had promised me. I had gone to the library and done research on learning languages. I knew what to expect, and had prepared blank note cards for vocabulary, and set up sentences I could translate. I had my walk man out and ready to use so I could listen to the sound of the language.
My parents had had other ideas.
“We're going to watch something different today!” my mother had announced one afternoon. She picked up the remote, and changed the channel.
“There,” she said. “Now, you kids learn something.”
I stared at the television, trying to make sense of it. I didn't understand anything they were saying. It was all so foreign. I watched closely, trying to follow, trying to figure out why my mother had decided that we would enjoy this.
A woman on the television started gyrating her hips. I thought she must be mocking someone. I couldn't figure out why, or who, but that didn't matter. I knew what gyrating hips meant – I had seen it often enough at school dances the public school put on my father forced me to go to to “meet some normal kids.”
Whatever she was saying, it was not appropriate for my seven year old sister. I watched, shocked, my mouth hanging wide open. “Mooooom!” I called. I stood up from the floor just in time for Cali to start imitating the woman on the television. I really didn't think this was right – my little sister gyrating her hips like she was some sex machine. “Mooooom!” I repeated.
“What sweety?” she said from the kitchen.
I walked through the hallway. She was literally up to her elbows in dough, preparing bread for the week. I rolled my eyes. Only my mother would find it appropriate to set her children down in front of a sex show and go away to the next room to make bread.
“Mom the people on the television are having sex,” I said. Our parents had taught us early on about sex, and we had learned about it in school. I was not ashamed of mentioning it, though I still didn't think it right to show it so blatently to Cali.
“I thought I blocked those channels,” my mother objected. She pulled her hands out of the dough and moved. “Cali,” she called through the hallway. “Cali sweetheart what are you watching?”
I followed my mom out the kitchen and into the living room. Cali stood in front of the televisino, gesticulating wildly with it, mumbling nonsense words. I thought she might go back to only speaking nonsense after this.
“Oh,” my mom said. The woman was no longer gyrating her hips, but I didn't think that made any difference. “This is what I put on for you two to watch,” my mom said. She put her hands on her hips, and made her serious mom face. I never believed it – my parents weren't much in to disicipline. They thought we would discipline ourselves through our own guilty conscious. “Cali, did you change the channel?” my mom asked.
Cali shook her head no.
“Drew, there's nothing wrong here,” my mom said, her voice sweet and soothing. Sickeningly sweet.
“But,” I started to protest.
“No buts here, mister,” she said. “Watch your telenovela.”
“I don't want to watch what the proleteriate watches!” I exclaimed. I didn't know what she was talking about, but I had pieced enough together. My sister and I were to learn Spanish by watching Spanish television. I picked up the remote and changed the channel to C-Span.
It was, not very surprisingly, in Spanish. I was not happy.
“I was watching that!” Cali exclaimed.
“Spanish sweety,” my mom said. “It's Spanish time now. You'll have to tell me in Spanish.”
Cali went quiet, staring at my mom. She couldn't articulate in Spanish.
“Mom, she doesn't understand Spanish,” I said. “We speak English here.”
“Not after school you don't Drew,” my mom said.
I was getting flustered. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Not only were we going to be expected to speak another language, we weren't being given the tools to learn the language. And, my mother wouldn't be able to understand us even if we did start magically speaking Spanish.
“My name is Andrew!” I exclaimed. I shoved the remote back in Cali's face. She changed the channel to something. What, I didn't know, as it was in Spanish, and I didn't speak Spanish. I skulked off to my room to try to study.
“That's not what your birth certificate says,” my mom protested, honey dripping from her words.
I hated it when she reminded me of that.