Dear Mexican: So there I was, sitting in Spanish class, like the good half-frog/half-wop (i.e., “frop”) that I am, when I observe the Spanish teacher write the word esposas up on the board. Imagine my shock/horror when the teacher told us that esposas has two meanings: “wives” and “handcuffs”! Please tell me this is a coincidence!

Fropito From Laguna Hills

Dear Gabacho: On one hand, I can point to Latin — i.e., show that esposas is the feminine plural of esposo, which comes from the Latin sponsus (same root word for “spouse”), which comes from the Latin spondere, which means “to bind,” and note that that’s exactly what handcuffs do. And then I can carry the misogynistic theme further and mention that wrists in Spanish translates as muñecas, which also means “dolls,” and that even the Real Academia Española doesn’t know the etymology of the word, or why the two words mean the same thing. And I can conclude by decrying machismo in Mexicans — it’s so ingrained in our culture that it’s even infested etymology. On the other hand, only a single guy would ever ask why esposas simultaneously means “handcuffs” and “wives.”

Dear Mexican: Just wondering, why do Mexicans love to eat shit? You can walk down the street in any Mexican city any day or night, and the smell of frying intestines and so forth is overpowering. To anyone but a Mexican, this is a repulsive smell — it literally repulses, meaning that it calls up an instinct to get as far away from such smells as possible. But one sees such food stands covered in Mexicans, like flies on shit. What gives here? Is shit — i.e., intestines — really a good food, or what? What am I missing here?

The Only Living Fresa in Puebla York

Dear Gabacho: You’re talking trash on tripas, which mankind has eaten in one form or another — sausage, dinuguan, chitlins, hamburger meat, taco meat — since your ancestors were wiping the culos of Olmec emperors. Fresas like you might sneer at tripas as pauper food, just like the elites of society have all through history, but whatever: That’s at least one thing ustedes will never gentrify. Besides, you already took the real shit of our society by embracing Maná.