I had a new neighbor one day, my age, with whom I could not communicate. He was new to this country. His family worked in the fields around our house. We began to try to communicate with signs. We exchanged languages, over the next two years and he became a citizen with his father (sorry, but women were not significant enough to warrant citizenship to his people, despite the fact that the "Matriarch" of the family is the ruler of all interests within the immediate family - never quite figured that shit out
). We became friends. Best friends, even. Well he was my only friend.
He and I were real friends for several years, until he took his afternoon siesta in the shade, under a grain truck in the harvesting fields one day. We were thirteen. He was "working" and I was playing. He napped for an hour after his lunch while I played in the irrigation ditch mud. He was crushed alive when the truck driver awoke from his siesta and realized that his truck was late for the harvester's load. It was bad.
I had taught several of them some English and they had taught me some "Mexican." (I found later that what I had learned was not really educated Spanish. My education in Spanish began about two years and many tears later.)
I always kept him in my mind as I learned his language for many years to come.
... but mainly, it was the language of the majority of the people who lived in the land where I grew up. Most people there speak both languages.
