Monday, August 21, 2006

Solo hablo espanol

This weekend I unexpectedly moved--I'll share more details on that in another post. For now though I wanted to share a story that happened while I was preparing to move.

On Friday I drove around to various grocery stores looking for free boxes to pack my stuff in. I wandered into Smart & Final and asked a store clerk for boxes. He directed me down aisle 9. I walked down the aisle to stumble upon another store employee sorting through discarded boxes and containers. I said hello and launched into my plea for free boxes. The man said looked at me blankly and said "solo hablo espanal."

Oh crap...I had known this moment was coming since I moved to LA. A city as diverse as Los Angeles and as close to Mexico I knew one day my long lost Spanish skills would come into play. Surely after 2 years in middle school, 4 years in high school, and a semester in college I could communicate something in Spanish right? My mind completely blanked. I said "hola..." Then I decided if I couldn't speak I could at least point. I walked over to the pile of boxes and pointed. The words "para mi... and mover" came out of my mouth. The man said something back in Spanish that I didn't catch. I kept trying...what were the words for free and boxes? And how did I conjugate a verb again? I kept mumbling and stuttering unintelligible "Spanglish" phrases.

Finally the man burst out laughing. He spoke clear English--"I'm just kidding...I speak English." The guy had tricked me! I looked at him in shock and then in relief--I could communicate clearly again. He gave me several nice boxes for free. While he was cutting one down for me I asked..."how was my Spanish?" He responded, "it was bad...really bad." I asked how I could have said correctly everything I had tried to say before. He taught me the basic phrases. Boxes = Cajas. Free = Gratis.

It was an odd experience to have happened but I'm glad it did. It was a reminder of what it feels like--even just for a couple minutes--to not be able to communicate. I felt like a fish out of water--total control lost for a few minutes. I hear tons of languages spoken around me everyday. Most commonly I hear Spanish and Korean. However I never have to speak Spanish or Korean because they know enough English to communicate with me...or we don't communicate at all. I want to learn more basic phrases in Spanish and Korean and perhaps Chinese (although I don't know what dialect is spoken around here). Part of the beauty of LA is the diversity but I was reminded Friday of how hard it can be to not to be in the majority culture.

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