I love my mama's stories about her and her kuyang:

When we were kids Your uncle Johnny would borrow a dime from me. He would say (in Pangasinan): "Ading, can I borrow your dime? I will pay you back." I would say "okay" and loan him a dime then he never paid me back!

Sometimes he would say, "Ading, let's go pick some guavas. I will climb and pick and you catch them when I throw them down ." So we went. I would catch the guavas with my dress as a "net". I was the "kid pulot" (pick up kid).

Then he would come down and we would divide the guavas. We would put them in one big pile and he would begin to split them, supposedly equal so he said. We would sit under the guava tree and he would start like this:

kienmo- kienko,
kienmo-kienko,
kienmo-kienko,
kienko-kienko-kienmo,
kienko-kienko- kienko-kienmo

one for you, one for me
one for you, one for me
one for you one for me
one for me, one for me, one for you
one for me, one for me, one for you

When I protested that he was not dividing it equally, he would say well he did the most difficult and riskiest job. So I agreed, I thought that was fair enough. We did not fight. I figured there were more than enough and could not have eaten all of my share anyway.

About the corn (maize). On Saturday mornings we would walk to the market to buy some yummy food. Some of them would buy bibinka or puto or other yummies. We would eat in the market or while we walked home. My favorite was maize. Sometimes my brother would also buy maize for himself . He was a fast eater and he would finish eating his maize before I could even start on mine. I was always a slow eater and by the time we start walking home I would still be taking my time eating my maize.

My brother would walk beside me and would say "Ading, can I have a small bite of your maize? I would say " okay, you can bite a little only". He would say "okay" then I'd hand him my maize and by the time he gave it back to me there would only be one bite left for me! I never got mad. But he did it everytime!

On one of our morning walks to the market, I kept my distance in anticipation that he would ask for a "tinsy winsy" bite out of my corn. When he approached me I started running away and he started chasing me. I still had a lot of bites left on my corn but this time I thought I 'd rather sacrifice my corn than be taken advantaged of. When he cought up with me I threw the whole nice yummy corn to the ground. He could no longer eat it, of course, and that was the end of his maize eating bullying trick on me! Everyone thought the maize was "sayang". (They felt bad that it was wasted.) I felt proud. I stopped the bully!