My father married a lady from Colombia who spoke only fragmented English, when I was 10. I took two years of Spanish in high school, and 1 full year in college. I'm married to a man from Mexico, and yet my Spanish still sucks.
A few years ago, a Mexican husband-wife team started to work at the same warehouse as me. Thinking that I would dazzle them with my Spanish word power, I tried out a few simple sentences in their native language. I told the husband,"Me gusta tu pelo pecho, esta muy guapo", thinking that I just said that he had a nice hair cut and that it looked good on him. He immediately blushed and crossed his arms over his chest. His wife seemed to get irritated at my remark, and I noticed an increasing redness spread furiously across her face. Then, just like now, I was too hopelessly clueless to know why. Until he informed me that my perceived innocent remark was actually translated as, "I like your chest hair, it looks handsome".
So, now the wife thought that I had the hots for her husband and she narrowed her eyes at me everytime our paths crossed. She lacked English proficiency, so that deepened her distrust of me and my wily American ways, even further. The husband, Bernardo, told me one day that he didn't sleep in the same bed with his wife because she was a restless sleeper. Again, I tried out a Spanish phrase on him and asked, "Ustedes dormir en la estufa"? To which he just looked really perplexed, and replied, "NO! I don't sleep in the oven". I intended to say SOFA, not oven, and estufa sounded plausible as a word that might mean SOFA, in my limited Spanish thinking. Who knew that SOFA in Spanish is SOFA?
After that, I gave up all hopes of Spanish communicado with these fine people unless it involved discussions of Pancho's Mexican Buffet, chupacabras, Menudo, or Montezuma's Revenge.
8 comments:
You are hilarious. And brave. Your kids are very blessed! Love those hot dog posts, too. Yeah, even a stauch Bush supporter as myself has been mad as heck and questioning. Found myself actually agreeing while watching Sen. Feinstein tonight on t.v. Never thought the day would come- hey, who says conservatives are close-minded? :)
miss biotech, Perhaps you can teach me Bulgarian. Then I can alienate and offend a whole new group of people. Remember my catch phrase, Equal opportunity Offender.
wendela, Just because we carry the title of Conservative doesn't mean that we relinquished our thinking capabilities at the door of the G.O.P. Mostly we neo-cons don't party all night, drink to excess, take drugs (illegal ones, right Rush and Bob Dole?), and because we hold down full time jobs, we don't have time to protest at ACLU, PETA, and GREENPEACE functions. That leaves us much more cerebral clarity time than our liberal counterparts to ponder the sad state of politics and raise HELL when necessary.
My goodness! That post had me laughing so hard my kids were asking me to share it with them. But I saved you further embarasment and quickly diverted their attention to their starving stomachs waiting for lunch.
Loved the hotdog posts too!
Your father (the one with the Colombian wife) just got back from 8 days in Colombia (without his wife) and managed to make it on his lowly spanish. I only spent a short time with family members and took the local transportation (the bus and taxis) to places like termales (hot springs) and Lago Calima in the mountains. You see, after 23 years of marriage, some of the spanish stuck to me as I was worse than you in language. Keep working on it and let the children learn it too so they don't have to go through what we did....posted with Love
I smoked cannabis and still remained conservative. I don't anymore because of many reasons, but I don't think drug usage is limited to liberals. I think people become liberal because of drug usage from a roundabout way. Hmmm...new post idea...
Patrick, If you notice, that's why I said, mostly, instead of just generally stereotyping conservatives. In my opinion, here's the delineation between the parties.
Conservatives: Work their butts off to support God, country, family, and buy their own weed.
Liberals: Thinks that the government should support them AND their weed habit.
You are so right! I had to work extra hard after I paid the bills in order to buy my own weed. Gol-darned free weed advocates...
I have weed all over my yard at this very moment Patrick, and you're very welcome to come take them all, FREE!
See, I'm also a free weed advocate too, does that make me a closet liberal?
Post a Comment