I start from a real anecdote, without fiction `where any resemblance to reality is pure coincidence’, being the following: I taught classes for the middle level of secondary school (ninth grade or third year) which began at 7:00 am, where there was a young man who was a repeat offender in late arrivals – 10 or 15 minutes –, generating the typical disturbances of someone who interrupts.

Of course we had to talk on more than one occasion, but nothing. I had no choice but to quote his parents as a way of collaboration and support.

For which I told the teenager, “please tell your old lady to come tomorrow to talk about punctuality”

The next day, the student’s mother showed up and once both had been introduced, as I began to explain the need for…, the lady stopped me and replied: “Look, professor, apparently you are not from my nationality, but…! your lady mother will be older!”

It is unnecessary that I would have wanted ‘the earth to swallow me’ at that moment, I apologized, I explained to the lady, but her face was immovable given the offense, therefore, lesson learned; apparently my strength in terms of ethnocentrism[1] was not yet strong enough and dragged the language of my ancestors.

Of course, behind each mistake there is a teaching – which I must continue to overcome -, and it is the correct use of language, where a word can have different meanings, as is the case of homophones, those that are pronounced the same, but have different meanings. different and in the case that they are written the same, with different meanings they are classified as homographs.

That, to return to the anecdote, in my culture saying old is a sign of affection, appreciation, love, flattery that is done to a person who, for many years, many have been by your side as a mother / father, grandmother / grandfather educating you, through advice possibly inherited from their parents or from their own experiences of what is good and what is bad, even though they have never had the chance to attend school.

For others, the options are many: my dad, dad, mom, even when the word Don or Doña is placed before the person’s name – a word of Hispanic origin widely used in protocol that precedes the person’s name and is used as an expression of respect, courtesy or social distinction -.

Perhaps the moral of this article is: `You have to love the elderly’, regardless of the distances, or the disagreements, without looking for who is right or wrong, and if they are alive, more and if not so, always keep them in your heart.