The other day my neighbor found an old answering machine and brought it by the house wanting some advice on how to make it work. It was tough for him because first of all the instructions were in English. Second, this answering machine is probably as old as I am. It’s almost the size of a small briefcase, and it uses actual cassette tapes (the big ones) to record on. After a few minutes of messing around w/ it, I had it pretty much figured out.

Then over comes Kaiwan, our neighbor’s almost two-year-old son. (I’ve mentioned him before – he’s great, and I love him…) Kaiwain likes to push buttons. So he and I sat on the floor my living room pushing buttons on the answering machine and listening to it intone “You have no messages…” Every time it said this, he would giggle.

I finally was able to show him the button that let you record a short memo, and he babbled away into it in his baby-talk/Portuguese. Then we sat there for another ten minutes as he pushed “Play” so he could hear himself speaking. He loved it.

The following day, as I was leaving the house, I saw them trying to teach Kaiwan how to flip people off… I guess it’s one of the many things you need to learn young when you grow up in the favelas. It was funny, yet sad too…

mas infelizmente, por agora, a vida é assim, né? é…

abraços