Parents 1, Me 0

My inability to speak Punjabi beyond the level of a 2 year old has always been a point of contention between my parents and I. Most of my friends that do speak it either had grandparents living with them while they grew up or they visited India for an extended period of time when they were young. Neither of these things happened to me and though I can understand the language pretty well, I have trouble stringing words together to form a grammatically correct sentence. I did attempt Punjabi classes when I was younger (or rather, was forced to by my parents), but these did little other than lower my self-esteem (being a 7th grader amidst a bunch of 3rd graders tends to do that, particularly when they can kick your butt at speaking). It was funny, we had family friends visiting us from India a few weeks ago and they were telling my parents that they had fantastic kids and that the only possible flaw that someone could point out about us was the language issue.

I wanted to be a doctor when I was little, before I even really knew what that meant. My parents picked up on this and every now and then as I grew up, their argument for learning to speak Punjabi was my foreseeable inability to communicate with Punjabi patients that didn't speak English. I pshawed this...until I was on call a couple weekends ago with my preceptor and I found myself in this situation. I could manage a few words but I definitely cursed my younger self for not trying as hard. I have one more thing to add to the infinite list of things to do now...