Thats a swear word?!

Mistakes

As kids, my sister and I Hula danced. It was fun-we did Hula, Tahitian, Samoan, and Maori dances, too. We were the only white girls out of a bunch of Asian and Samoan girls. We were all friends, though.

We had been practicing very hard for a couple of hours on one Kahiko, and we were on a little break. I was sitting down, and got up to get some water. As I got up, I kinda grunted and it made a sound like, "UFA!"

When I uttered that "UFA" sound, the whole room stopped and got dead silent. Moana, one of the Samoan girls gasped, "Uuuuum, I cant believe you said that word!!!!! Youre in big trouble!" I was thinking, "What in the world did I say?!?!?!"

All the parents were glaring at me and my dance teacher scolded me in front of everyone, telling me to never say anything like that again. I later found out I had uttered one of the worst swear words in the Samoan language!!!

Even worse, was that my mom yelled at me in front of everyone, as if I knew I was even swearing!!!! It was pretty humiliating. Now, as an adult, I make sure to grunt, "UFA!" everytime I get up.

And even to this day, I still dont know exactly what that word means!!!!