Cultural Faux Pas...what was I thinking?

For those who know me very well, they have heard, too many times, about my propensity to totally embarrass myself.  I have a ton of stories that often my friends will say..."Oh, tell THAT ONE over again!"  My Teammate says, "you could write a book just with all your embarrassing moment stories!"  The fact that I have so many of them always helped during the days I hosted a talk radio program...if there was nothing much in the news to center the topic upon...then I could always drag out a good personal "embarrassing moment" story and the call lines would lite up with people who wanted to comment.

But, I think, Saturday was possibly my top 1 or 2 most embarrassing moment of my lifetime!

We have some friends from India.  Their son has been in the school since we arrived and has been classmates with Brownie and Potato.  They were fast friends from the start, especially because they could all speak English together immediately, before they had learned to speak Chinese with their classmates.

The family has decided to take their son back to India to enroll him in school there, as the schools in their area might be very difficult to enter if he goes further in our system.

Anyway, there was a "Farewell to Fawaz" gathering on Saturday at a clubhouse at the family's apartment complex.  I offered to bring some food as I would always do.  Friday night we had a slumber party for The Bug's birthday, so after making pancakes and bacon for 14 on Saturday morning, and having some other friends over for lunch, I was under pressure to come up with something to take for the party.

I decided on making quiche for lunch, so quickly assembled and extra to take to the party, as well.

We jammed onto an overcrowded bus to travel to the party.  Everyone being careful not to jostle the bag with the quiche in it.  When we arrived several, including the party hosts, gathered around to inquire about my culinary contribution.

I was explaining that this was a "quiche."  I went on to detail the ingredients...eggs, flour, swiss cheese, vegetables, bacon...... BACON....

Just as I said the words...I was horrified!

I had totally forgotten/overlooked/spaced the fact that our dear friends, whose "going away" were were trying to honor, are MUSLIMS and therefore consider PORK, HEINOUS!

Standing there in my shock and embarrassment, my mind flooded with the stories I'd heard about the families extreme stance on pork.  Like the time that the 1st grade teacher gave a hungry Fawaz some of the vegetable dish the other children were eating for school lunch...but it had PORK in it...and the parents were very, very unhappy!  Even the dish that HAD pork in it is considered unclean...

and here I came, smiling, with my family of 9...and offered as my dish to HONOR our friends...a quiche with UNCLEAN meat in it!

I felt dizzy.  I could NOT believe that I had done such a thing!

I apologized profusely..."I'm so sorry, so sorry!  I never meant ANY disrespect. I don't know what I was thinking!"  Tears stung in my eyes.

They were cool.  They kept saying, "really it is okay, don't worry, there are other things for us to eat!"

Yeah, good thing they had other friends who had their heads screwed on...I guess my actions said..."good bye there friends...let me serve you some unclean food to show how important you were to us..."

Maybe some day I will be able to laugh about this one, just like I have about the time my dress was stuck in the backside of my pantyhose and I sauntered to the front of the church when I was 14...

Or the time, when I was in college, while speaking from the pulpit in a church in New Zealand, in expressing our Team's thankfulness for all the wonderful food the home-stay families had fed us I said 3-4 times how "stuffed" we were...in fact I "couldn't remember a time when I've been more stuffed."...only slightly aware of the horror on the faces of the congregation...I was immediately given a humiliating cultural language lesson by the Pastor on the spot that "stuffed" in NZ is akin to using the "F" word in American English!

I nearly died on that day, too.