Late one evening Canutito was sitting en la cocina, armed with paper, scissors, glitter and glue. He stuck his tongue slightly out of the side of his boca as he concentrated on what he was doing.

"¿Qué estás haciendo, m'hijo?" Grampo Caralampio asked, sidling up to him. "It looks like you are trabajando murre de duro."

"Oh grampo," began the little boy, "la mestra at school had us draw names and we have to make valentine cards for the kids whose names we drew. A mí me tocó the girl who sits in back of me."

Grampo Caralampio was looking at his grandson carefully as he was speaking. He began to suspect that Canutito kind of liked the girl who sat in back of him.

"¿Qué pasa, m'hijo?" he asked him. I suspect que tú le tienes los hots a esa muchachita. Am I right?"

Canutito blushed a deep shade of colorão and he hung his cabeza.

"Ay, m'hijo," began his grampo trying to console his nieto when he saw that his grandson was quite taken with the girl. "That is nothing to darte vergüenza about. Everybody falls in love at one time or another."

"Did you ever tenerle los hots a anybody?" asked Canutito innocently.

"Sí," replied his grampo, stroking his chin as he recalled his youth fondly. "Her name was Sinforosa y ella vivía at the house right next to us so I could watch her often."

"Y," began Canutito, perking up, "did she like you back, grampo?"

"Pus, I'm not really chur," said Mano Caralampio. "We came from two different mundos, you see? I came from a family of borregueros-sheepherders, y ella, well, she belonged to a family that owned a pack of dogs. In order to show her that I liked her I would push her into mud puddles and pull on her trensas y cosas ansina."

"I don't think Clara would like for me to push her into a mud puddle or pull on her pigtails, grampo," returned Canutito.

"Maybe that's why Sinforosa," continued his abuelito, still lost in thought, "used to call me names every time that I walked past her house. From her porch she would yell: 'You smell like a borrega! ¡Borreguero! ¡Borreguero! ¡Borreguero!' "That hurt my pride and I wanted to call her something back. All I could think of was que ella tenía a big ole pack of dogs. Pero I couldn't think of nicknames having to do with perros. Finally I got an idea. I called back: 'Y tú, you dog person who lives with perros. ¡Perroda! ¡Perroda! ¡Perroda!' And after that she stopped calling me a borreguero."

"Uh, isn't a 'perroda' a lady who stinks?" asked Canutito puzzled.

"Ya, I guess it is," replied his grampo, "Perrodos are what we called stinkbugs over here. I guess she figured out that being a borreguero is not quite as bad as being a perroda."

"Did you quit liking her, grampo?" asked Canutito of his grandfather.

"No, todavía le tenía los hots, so for St. Valentine's Day I decided to make her un valentine. On the front of the card I drew an ojo, a pair of zapatos, the letter U, the number 2, an obispa, the word MY and a heart. On the inside, of the card I wrote: "I 'shoes' you to be my valentine. Pues, you know that chee made a big ole escándalo and ran around the classroom telling everybody que I couldn't speaking good English. That's when I gave up on her.

"Pero just imagine, grampo," said Canutito looking up at him, "if you had still liked her you never would have met a la Grama Cuca.

"Oh no, m'hijo," replied his grandfather. "She came later. I think I fell in love with your grandma on Groundhog Day or on el Día de los Muertos..."

¿Le gustaría compartir sus propias anécdotas o comentar con Torres sobre esta columna? Envíele un correo electrónico a lartor@unm.edu.