Episode 47, Intermediate English - Bro Stories: Our favorite toys from Santa Claus! Dos hermanos se hablan de sus recuerdos navideños

[00:00:00] Welcome to No Te Rindas Intermediate English, Home of the Intermediate English app, disponible n No te Rindas.ca.u.s. Este es un podcast para hispanohablantes que quieren mejorar su comprensión auditiva del inglés de los Estados Unidos somos dos hermanos americanos con raíces mexicanas.

[00:00:25] So I gobble, ok. I keep on mi hermano mayor goyo, ok. Good morning everybody. Ok, I'm on vacation. My students have left for the semester and I can sleep a little bit. How are you? I'm good.

[00:00:45] I'm just glad that you made it through the end of the first half of the school year. And I remember last time we were talking, you were worried that you were going to run out of patients.

[00:01:00] In other words, you were going to lose your patients and with these kids that were so excited about the winter holiday. That's right. And we thought it would be fun now that we're in the full swing of the Christmas holidays to talk about our Christmas memories. That's right.

[00:01:23] Today we were going to think about some memories that we had together at Christmas time. Greg and I grew up in different houses because we are what they call half brothers. So we have the same father but different mothers and Greg grew up with my dad.

[00:01:45] And I grew up with my mom and I only saw a dad forward like two weeks at Christmas. And I saw a dad for about a month in the summertime.

[00:01:57] So it was always really special to get to see Greg at Christmas because we didn't see each other most of the year. That's right. You're like your memories with your siblings perhaps where you know you have a lot of memories of pain or argument or things like that.

[00:02:20] Gabo and I were mostly spared from that. No teniamos problem as we know. No, no, no. No see about almost within. So we have some fun stories to tell you about that time in our lives.

[00:02:34] Today we're going to be using a lot of past tense forms including the what they call the predatory to simply and imperfecto or the predatory to imperfecto. So for example, I'll be saying or Gabo will be saying that somebody went somewhere.

[00:02:53] So come away and we would do something. We would go somewhere. We would play right. So like we would eat cookies would be like, go me almost guy yet us. We're also going to be using. There were to state general truths come up.

[00:03:16] So there were always parades on television during the Christmas season or there were always cartoons on TV on Saturday mornings. That kind of thing. Right. Well, we usually would have our vocabulary list here but because this is more of a conversational episode.

[00:03:44] We decided we would not have a vocabulary list today. So we will get straight to the episode unless there's something that you want to tell us about first. Great. Well, as a matter of fact, we've got something very helpful to tell you about orientas.

[00:04:01] Si te gusta escuchar noistros episodios e si usas android lo clave. Puez bahar noistra app. Or me or the sir, nostros apps. Gratis de google play. Bring us in las es en nuestra página no te irindasparques.usse a todas las apps disponibles en ese momento.

[00:04:25] Por ejemplo, hoy tenemos Game 3 juegos que corresponden a 15 episodios de noterindas in community English. Si quieres practicar tu inglés con nosotros poco a poco de atrás de ab. Bahá una app. Es gratis. Visita no te orindasparques.usse y hace un click en la pestagna para aplicaciones.

[00:04:53] Gracias. Y oyentes. Grego y yo compusimos estas aplicaciones nosotros mismos. Try one and tell us what you think. So our father had a room in his home. That you would call a salaf. In most Spanish speaking places, I know in Peru. They call it o'living.

[00:05:21] So we would have a Christmas morning in the living room. Right. The living room. So the living room is the the biggest room in the house. It's not a bedroom. It's a place where people would traditionally do things like if guests came over

[00:05:41] They would sit and we would all sit in the living room and talk or it's also a place where people traditionally now watch TV. Right. Yes, although in our living room growing up, we did not have a television for very long because my stepmother was a piano teacher.

[00:05:59] So we had a grand piano in the living room and then you know, a sofa and a couple of comfortable chairs. And so this is where the Christmas tree would go. Our would be placed. And you know, the boxes with the presents would go under the tree.

[00:06:19] And then on Christmas morning, you would burst through that door, Gabe. And see what Santa Claus had had left you and his dad used to say, Santa Claus broke open his sack. He broke open his sack at our house. Yes, he said that even when we were grown,

[00:06:45] he would always say, well, I hope Santa breaks his sack at your house. So that all these ideas that a bunch of extra presents would fall out. Extra gifts or toys would fall out. But that's right. I remember, of course, dad had a,

[00:07:01] remember how he had a there was a door that led into the living room that was, it was a swinging door. So it was a door that would would open in both directions and it didn't really close like a traditional door.

[00:07:14] It had a spring on the hinge so that it would hold it in a closed position. That way you could just, I guess if you were going to serve, if you're going to serve food, because there was a dining room in there too,

[00:07:26] you could just push on the door with your foot if you had your hands full of food. But so that's the door we would burst through to see what was in the living room. That's right. And my memory of these toys includes lots of things for drawing.

[00:07:51] And art, plastic toys that you could use like an etchisket, where you could draw and then shake it and it would erase itself. And when we had different kinds of car racing games or video, so who get this normalist that they had in a car,

[00:08:20] but my favorite, I think my favorite toy that we ever got. It was so simple. It was what we call an analog tape recorder or a gravador de de sinta. And it had a built-in microphone. And you would press, I think, record and play at the same time.

[00:08:50] And we had a series, a stack of cassette tapes. And I know it's hard for our, our loyal listeners, our listeners who listen week after week. I know it's hard for you to imagine. But Gabe and I actually enjoyed tap recording our voices and telling stories.

[00:09:15] And then listening to them later, I know that's incredibly hard to believe. Given that we now make a podcast, but that was to me Gabe kind of like the birth of our podcast, you know, 40 something years ago that we would come up with sound effects,

[00:09:31] and what we don't know if you know or hear it is that in this episode, we had two million sources. One was the caricatures, the millions of the Sabados, and with their commercial, corresponding sources, very important. So we watched cartoons on Saturday mornings and watched the commercials,

[00:09:59] right, the commercials were often humorous. They were funny or, or they, you know, they told very short stories so that the resolution of the story was to buy the product, of course. But then the other big one was Sesame Street, the Plaza Sessamo in Otostugades.

[00:10:19] Minabamo's Plaza Sessamo, come on out really, young. I loved that show. And we would imitate those characters on the tape recorder. So, I mean, I loved my toy McDonald's that I got. I loved the chalks and the paints, but making little recordings with you

[00:10:45] and the cat, for example, because we had a cat named Tiger, and he would purr into the microphone, and the brownie Abba, and in the crowphone, oh, Maljaba. It was just so much fun. So that's my most precious toy memory from Santa Claus. What do you remember game?

[00:11:07] I remember that Christmas because Santa brought us both tape recorder. They were the same, that's right, exact model. But I remember I must have been about five or six, and you must have been 11 or 12. Because I couldn't read yet very well,

[00:11:27] because I remember one of the tapes that we still have somewhere, you were like Gabriel read this word, and it was the word L-O-A-D. And I said, low-add, I was trying to sound it out and you were like, it's low-add. I was like, low-add. I remember that too.

[00:11:53] So, how did he say low-add? It was a cargar, or a metal metal rock. I said, let's put it in the middle. Let's put it in the middle. We have to load it, load the cassette into the tape player. So you could play other tapes, of course,

[00:12:15] that you could play mute tapes, of music, for example, that was before compact discs or CDs, which are now obsolete also. But the audio, the audio seems to be. But the speaker on that tape recorder was not very good, it was not very big.

[00:12:37] So, but the idea that you could carry this around with you and listen to stuff was just magical. So, that's a very happy Christmas memory of mine too. So I'm so glad that you remember that. And you were the one that got the idea to record us

[00:12:58] and make some things that were funny. I remember getting tickled on the, getting tickled is another way of saying, you know, getting, making laughing, finding something really funny to the point that you laugh. I remember getting tickled at things you did

[00:13:18] and laughing on the recording and hearing, you know, hearing myself laugh in my little tiny, five or six year old voice. So your voice is a little deeper now than it was then for sure. Although I still have a southern accent just like I did.

[00:13:37] Before we get to like the clearest Christmas memory I have, Dan would put when I, you know, at least was old enough to remember it, Dan would put up Christmas decorations. And he really liked these sort of foil, cellophane foil type of decorations that they were three inches.

[00:14:07] Like you could store them and they were flat and then you could, you could like close them like a book. I guess kind of, and when you would close them it would form a shape like a ball or a sphere.

[00:14:20] And they were, you know, usually green or red and very shiny. Did, do you remember him putting those up when you were little like when you were a small child? Yeah, see, to describe it a little bit in Spanish they were from aluminum. And that's why super-lustient and

[00:14:44] they would be built in natures. So when they were correctly, they were like, how would it be as an explosion, like the Luzka escape from the soul. The Westropapapa, Los Yamaba, you remember that? I forgot and then he called them there.

[00:15:12] Let's say we need to go, we need to go get the ball. How do I imitate the sound of the explosion? But I see, see, can you hear exactly? So I remember that's a happy memory because my mother would decorate for Christmas

[00:15:36] but we didn't have anything like those things. So the Christmas I remember best, you must have been 15, which would have made me nine years old. And the reason I remember it is because you weren't driving yet but you were riding a bike a lot.

[00:16:05] And it was the Christmas that Santa brought you a bike helmet. You really were excited about a bike helmet and when you're a little child, Christmas is really exciting. So I've always been a, was always a child that woke up early anyway but especially on Christmas,

[00:16:33] I was excited and I would want to get up and see the presence to see the gifts that Santa had left. And that was such a strange Christmas. I don't know why Dad decided to do that and it may have been,

[00:16:52] I don't know it could have been our stepmom's idea but that Christmas, they almost did it like Hanukkah. And Hanukkah involves the children being left presence several nights in a row. And we're not Jewish, but I remember that Christmas Santa Claus came

[00:17:13] several nights in a row and brought, wow, a few presents do you remember that? No, you are teaching me something. I have no memory of this. So I remember the first morning that Santa brought your bike helmet waking you up and saying let's go see what Santa brought.

[00:17:35] And we were sleeping on the floor for some reason. I remember Dad would often make a palette. A palette is like when you take padding or blanket and put them on the floor so that you can sleep

[00:17:49] on the floor, that's one of the ways that you'd the word, palette, and in this case it's like a makeshift bed on the floor. And we would sleep on a palette together when I was visiting. And I guess Dad just either we wanted to sleep

[00:18:05] in the same room or Dad liked the idea of us sleeping in the same room some of the time. So those are happy memories. But I remember waking you up and you were on the floor. And we went in there and I remember you found your bike helmet.

[00:18:20] Which is just a, what do you got? Cascos. Cascos for a proper hair like a dog when you're wearing a basic dress. So I remember you put the bike helmet on and then you got back in bed and laid down

[00:18:40] and fell asleep with the bike helmet on your head. Me, door me, yavandu, and Cascos. You know, I'm in my morning. You know, I'm in my morning. Wow, really? Yes, I suppose. Explain to me on my neck pain now. It was a white helmet.

[00:19:01] And I remember later you added some customized pin stripes to it. You took some strips of cinta and you put them on there. Some colored strips to make it look cooler. So that, that Christmas Santa Claus brought me sports stuff. Oh. So I remember like,

[00:19:26] it was, and a lot of it was sports stuff that you could do by yourself. So I guess dad, you know, knew that I was the only child at my house and there might not have people to play with.

[00:19:39] I remember one of the things Santa Claus brought was a soccer ball. Una pelota de football, un balón de football. And it had a net, una red. And this net went over the football and then the net had a long string, like a stretchy string,

[00:20:01] a string that would stretch. And you could stake the string into the ground. So in other words, you could stick the string. You could use a metal spike or wooden clavo. Mm-hmm. And put it in the ground.

[00:20:16] And then you could kick that soccer ball and it wouldn't go very far. And then it would come back to you because the string would, would pull it back to you. So I remember he gave me,

[00:20:29] that's one of the things I remember Santa Claus giving me that Christmas. And I remember playing with it a lot in the front yard. Wow, and I don't remember that at all. I have two car memories. Do you remember the figure eight?

[00:20:49] They owe it to a racetrack with the two slots in it so that cars could race side by side with remote controls? Yes, I vaguely remember the way those looked in the way the little hand-held devices work.

[00:21:07] Because all it was was just a tricking trigger that you would squeeze and then the car would go. So I don't know how would the trigger, but the part of it is a piece of cake that I will now wait for. I have this scene ballast.

[00:21:29] It's just for creating more speed and we are doing cars in this Vias. We talk a little bit about your memory of the video game. It was the very first video game I ever owned and it had a racing component. Do you remember that?

[00:21:52] I very vaguely remember us having some sort of primitive early video game. The one I remember had like, pong on it, which was like, right? It was like, come with then. It's a very simple version of tennis.

[00:22:09] But I do remember one where there was a, you know, there was a very primitive racing game. And you would turn this little dial and when you turn the dial to the left,

[00:22:19] the car would move to the left and when you turn the dial to the right, it would move to the right along this very primitive track. So that I think he would call that a steering wheel or a boulante.

[00:22:32] I mean, it was big enough that you could grab it with two hands and steer it like a car. You know, I felt like a really big kid with that. Do you remember that it had a duck shooting game? I do remember it having a gun.

[00:22:49] Yeah, had a gun component and there was like this little basically just a un quadro a square of light that would move around that you could shoot. The game was in black and white. I vaguely remember that and that was, you know, sort of before the first.

[00:23:07] Yeah, the Atari, which was the first major home video game system, which would have come out in like 1980, 181 and 82 somewhere in that range. So wow, we played with that a lot. I mean, yeah.

[00:23:26] All right, well, I have a confession to make to you, gay, where I need to beg your forgiveness. Ruego to perdon. Ed Monomio. We were driving to you, dad and I probably are step mom. We were driving to you and you might have been in Tennessee.

[00:23:52] You might have been in Mississippi. But I guess we were recollecting you up so that we could take you back to Haddy'sburg. This is where I lived in as a child in South Mississippi. And you had received your Santa Claus toys in your mother's home.

[00:24:15] So I was visiting you in your mother's home and that year you had received a drum kit. Come all day, Batarista. And you'd also receive a golf game. So you had golf clubs and little plastic balls that you could hit like, you know,

[00:24:37] like Tiger Woods or something, all the Tiger Woods probably wasn't born yet. But anyway, no, I'll be in a seat. So I wanted to play those drums. Gay, but I really did that that was amazing. You had symbols, you had a bass drum, you had a snare drum.

[00:24:59] It was fabulous. And I took one of the golf clubs because there was more than one. I remember thinking, well, there's more than one of these golf clubs. And I broke it in two. I mean, when we're talking about three hours after you had gotten it,

[00:25:18] I broke it. And so I had a stick to hit the drums with. And your mother came in the room and saw that broken golf club. And, you know, I was only going to be there for a few minutes.

[00:25:35] I only saw your mother a few minutes a year. And suddenly she became angry. She's like, that was not broken just a few minutes ago. And man, I felt like dirt under the rug. I mean, I felt horrible.

[00:25:55] So I'm sorry that I broke your golf game so I could play drums. Cut it on. I accept your apology. I can see the look on my mother's face. I've never heard this story.

[00:26:16] So it must have been like a little toy drum set, which means I would have been little, little. So I wonder how old you were. I mean, it was probably before you were in Nashville. We're spent part of your childhood. So I was 14.

[00:26:37] Yeah, you were eight or nine. So you were smaller than that. You were probably five, six years old. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the time I was six, I lived in Nashville. So it would have been I was four or five. So yeah.

[00:26:53] Well, I'm sure that we can discuss some way. You can can compensate me. So that Rick on Pinsa, I can recommend. So I can recommend. So I can recommend. Oh, damages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I felt bad about that for, um, I don't know, 45 years now.

[00:27:12] So I feel very good being able to tell you. I think I think this has been like therapy for me. So I feel this rejuvenated. Yeah. That's what I'm going to do. Thank you. You can let that go now and feel good. You are forgiven.

[00:27:31] I have no interest in golf even if this day. So probably, uh, See no beer, just three dollars. And the keeper, Abriest, who got golf professionally. They almost said it's all my fault. Me, Kootpa.

[00:27:51] Well, um, why don't we do a little quiz and see if any of our listeners who are still awake and with us might remember what we did. You want to do a quiz question about your Christmas memories? Sure. All right. It's time for our quiz.

[00:28:20] Here comes question number one. Gabe. What was my favorite item that I received from Santa Claus? Was it a, uh, a ping pong paddle and a ping pong table? B, a tape recorder that you and I used to use to make commercials

[00:28:49] and little skits and shows on or see a football helmet. A football helmet. What was my favorite Christmas toy that I remember receiving from Santa Claus? Hmm. I don't remember playing ping pong with you, although that's a fun game.

[00:29:16] And I remember something about a helmet, but it wasn't a football helmet. So, your favorite Christmas present that you were talking about was that tape recorder that you and I used to record our own little stories and commercials. That is correct.

[00:29:37] We were podcasting before there were even podcasts invented. We should be, um, we should be very proud of that. All right. How about you take question number two? Okay. Number two. Greg, you heard this story for the first time and it's about you and a Christmas morning.

[00:29:59] So let's see if you can remember what happened. That Christmas morning Santa Claus brought you a bicycle helmet. Santa Claus brought you a bicycle helmet. And then I told a story about what you did once you got the helmet. Open the present with a helmet in it. Okay.

[00:30:23] Did you, A, put the helmet on, get on your bike and ride around the neighborhood. B, take the helmet and use it to hold a bunch of potato chips which you then ate.

[00:30:39] Or C, did you put the helmet on and go back to bed and fall asleep while wearing the helmet? Well, I'm sure I did put the helmet on and ride around the neighborhood on my bicycle with it. But that wasn't what you said and I didn't remember this.

[00:31:02] So I certainly remember wearing the helmet of course. And I'm not, I'm not one who would mix potato chips and the perspiration, and the pseudo right of a helmet together. I would, that, as a city, I'm, we ask it also in part of me.

[00:31:25] So it has to be that I put the helmet on and fell back asleep and I have since then had horrible neck pain. Okay. Why don't we do one more? We talked about a particular thing that Dad would do at Christmas time. And our dad would call them,

[00:32:00] Poo! What do you remember that Poo was? Was it? Was it a type of gun? B, a type of colorful aluminum Christmas decoration or C, a type of horn. Hey!

[00:32:30] Well, although many boys do receive guns at Christmas time, that is a popular thing especially in the south where we live. I did not ever receive an actual gun. No horns Dad did not like noise so he would never have bought us a horn.

[00:32:59] So the answer is it was a type of aluminum decoration that looked like fireworks or Fuego's artificialists when they explode. So he called it a Poo! That's correct. You see, your memory is not as bad as you thought. I wish I could remember being skinny.

[00:33:26] But we sure do want to thank you for walking down memory lane with us and listening to this episode. We especially want to thank our patrons if you would like to support this show.

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[00:34:14] Today we want to focus on a listener in Bogota Colombia, which is Gracias. He also sent a message to Chile. Gracias, gracias a ustedes. Anything else come to mind, Gabe?

[00:34:32] Yeah, I want to remind you to leave us a review on Apple podcasts or whatever podcast platform you listen to us on. It really does help us reach other listeners and as always, you can also use your help on the podcast.

[00:34:51] Please send us a email to questions about no terrain dust podcast.wez. And it's not the terrain dust podcast.wez that you can find a link to our Google Play store. We have three apps that you can play and they're all soon before that correspond to our episode.

[00:35:16] So if you want to practice, you can practice, okay? I'm either in the episode, please be hard, let's put the left and right. Android. Thank you for all the wonderful memories. Christmas would not be the same without my bro.

[00:35:40] Well, thank you for this time and for these happy memories. I've been thought about some of this stuff in years. And I'm especially, I think it's especially good to know that the juror, the one that broke that golf club because I always had blamed myself for that.

[00:36:00] No, I'm just kidding. Very, very happy memories. I still remember your smiling face as you slept, wearing that bicycle element and how cute that was even to me when I was nine. So anyway, Merry Christmas to you.

[00:36:16] And I look forward to us doing another episode soon and you think we'll do one more before the new year? Yeah, I think we'll talk about run. We'll have part two of our last episode. Well, these most came play and let Palabra run. Right, okay.

[00:36:34] So we'll do one more before the new year. So that's exciting. Well, I look forward to seeing you then. Okay. Love you. Bye-bye. Love you. Bye-bye.