They misunderstand English words...then turn it against you!

One more really annoying thing about Indian parents: they take any opportunity to latch onto something they misunderstood...and then turn it against you.

For instance, a high school classmate (I'm now 34 y/o) saw me come into our school building on a rainy day, and she exclaimed, "deleted-desi, you're sopping wet!" This was a sympathetic exclamation from my classmate.

My mother overheard my classmate's innocuous, sympathetic comment. Being Indian, my mother couldn't help but latch onto the comment and then turn it against me. My classmate was sympathetic and felt bad for me because I was soaked, but my mother flew off the handle yelling at me, "That's right! You are slopping! You are a sloppy girl! You are a sloppy floppy! Sloppy ploppy!" etc.

For weeks, my mother continued to call me slopping, sloppy, sloppy girl, sloppy floppy, sloppy ploppy, etc. My mother felt justified in calling me these names because she thought my classmate had done the same. My mother used this set of nicknames until she got bored of them.

I tried in vain to explain to my mother, over and over again, that my classmate hadn't called me sloppy at all. She'd said I was sopping wet from the rain, which isn't the same as being sloppy. I tried to explain this to my mother over, and over, and over, and over. I begged her to listen and try to understand. But being Indian, my mother had zero interest in listening to anything I said. In fact, every time I talked about it, it only angered my mother more, and she used the sloppy-related insults even more.

Also, the reason I got soaked in the first place was that I didn't have a rain jacket or umbrella. According to my parents, I didn't need outerwear because I wasn't supposed to be going outside. They said I could just run into school in the morning, and run back to the car in the afternoon, so I didn't need outerwear.