She Had to Forget to Remember
My grandmother was from Spain. At some point in my life, I was like, “Why don’t I know how to speak Spanish”? So, I asked my mom since I had never heard her speak Spanish either. She said, “My mom came to America and was one of the ‘we are in America now, so we speak English now’ people”.
When we started pestering her to teach us Spanish, she claimed that she had forgotten how to speak it. We all kind of thought she was full of garbage, but she was adamant about it. She was sharp as a tack until her mid-90s and lived alone.
Finally, we had to move her to our house and then to assisted living because she wanted to be closer to her friends. When she ended up in a nursing home because she was on her last legs and her mind started to go, we caught her speaking Spanish to the primarily Hispanic staff.
She basically had to go senile to forget that she told us that she couldn’t speak Spanish. It was an unintentional confession that she always knew how to speak the language, but she just didn’t want to because it wasn’t the American thing to do. Story credit: Reddit / EatATaco