Thumbs Down

Fio has been watching La Piloto, a Spanish-language soap opera every week night, but she doesn't like it.  The melodrama, she can take, but the violence is a different matter. People, good people, are being killed off right and left. Even pregnant people--Amanda, who is about eight months pregnant, just got run down by Zulima, la bruja. At this rate, Fio will be surprised if even the hero and heroine make it out alive. El Color de Pasion, a romance. had its fair share of violence--six deaths, but that's peanuts compared to La Piloto. Fio hopes the show will end soon and that the next telenovela will be another romance.

That being said, Fiorella admits she's been researching the actors. She did that for El Color cast too. Just nosey.

Bang, Bang! You're Dead!

La Piloto is getting boring. Minor characters are being killed off by the dozens as Santamaria and Oscar still chase after Yolanda, who still hasn't realized that Dave is her best choice.  Fio thought the Spanish-language telenovela was building toward a resolution, but maybe not. Besides, the characters talk too little and too fast for Fio's English ear to catch as much as a mucho. They make the Spanish-language news reporters sound like they're drawling.

Fiorella would like to change her allegiance to La Mujer de Vendaval, in which the actors speak at a normal pace, but it doesn't come on till midnight, and Fio has to sleep sometime.

To Spank or Not

The debate about spanking was raging full force when Fiorella's children were little.   Fio herself had been spanked as she grew up, usually by her mother, first by hand, then with a yardstick,  She was also slapped across the face, especially as a teenager. In accordance with tradition, Fiorella spanked her first child, slapped his hand when he got into forbidden stuff, and slapped his face once that she remembers, when he kept pushing down the receiver on a telephone while she was trying to make an emergency call,

Then it dawned on her that physical punishment wasn't working, that Son considered himself shed of his sins afterwards and proceeded into new mischief.  So Fiorella switched strategies and tried to build a conscience in him.  She did the same with her other two children, relapsing occasionally, she admits, in dire circumstances.

If Fio ever has grandchildren, she hopes they will be violence-free.  We CAN improve from generation to generation.

Reincarnation

It may be just wishful thinking, but more and more, Fiorella is beginning to believe in some kind of multiple lives.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if all those people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, in riots and random violence all over the world, would have another chance?  Wouldn't it be wonderful if the essential Fio could live again, but do better the next time around?

How?

Fiorella doesn't understand how people can deliberately harm each other.  She can't even bear to give herself shots before surgery.

Good grief--maybe Fio is BIg Bird!