Me No Speak Good Mexican

I've lived in the western United States for over 50 years and have somehow managed to escape learning Spanish the entire time. It's not that I haven't tried. I took 4 years of it in college. But repeating lines out of my workbook like, "Maria está viendo la televisión en la casa." (Maria is watching television in the house.) didn't seem to be nearly as useful as phrases like, "Quisiera mirar abajo la blusa de esa muchacha." (I'd like to look down that girl's blouse.") When I started teaching skiing to visitors from Mexico City, I found that it might even save someone's life. When one of my students is careening down the mountain at mach 6 on skis, it's important to know how to say, "¡Pare o usted se estrellará y matarse con ese cuarto de baño en el aire libre!" (Stop or you'll crash into that outhouse and kill yourself!).

Anyone who speaks a foreign language will tell you the best way to become fluent is to totally immerse yourself in the culture. By fumbling over the simplest words like milk, sugar, bread, sex, hashish, irritable bowel syndrome, unwanted pregnancy and federal penitentiary, you quickly become absorbed in not only the vocabulary and sentence structure but also how the language is used in the context of every day living. So, in 1972 I packed up my VW bus and headed down to 'ol Mexico to learn how to speak Spanish.

Fortunately, I had friends of some friends of some friends of a family who lived in Guadalajara that were willing to take me under their wing. The first evening after I arrived, I met the Pintados at a popular restaurant in town called, "El Pescado de Ahogamiento" (The Drowning Fish) - a popular destination by locals because of its remarkable seafood. After introductions all around, the waiter came to take our orders. Señor Pintado started by asking the waiter, "¿Que tiene en el menu que no me haga daño?" or "What do you have on the menu that won't make me sick?" A good phrase to know when dining out. I wrote that down in my notebook. His wife and 15 daughters Juliana, Marisol, Evita, Esperanza, Mercedes, Jacinta, Paloma, Daniela, Ella, Carlota, Allegra, Tia, Daniela, Adriana and Gabriella gave the waiter their orders and then looked at me. Since it didn't matter if the menu was upside down or not, I pointed to something I vaguely remembered seeing at Chili's.

While we were waiting for our orders to arrive, Señor Pintado and I attempted to stumble through an adult conversation using simple words, our hands, feet, silverware and any other object that would make up for this gringo's failure to understand even the simplest Spanish terms.

It's incredibly frustrating when you'd like to say, "When do you think the middle class will see signs of improvement in the economic slowdown?" but instead you inadvertently come out with something like, "Can I put my suitcase in your virgin daughter's ear?"

After dinner, Señor Pintado explained that if I was going to languish in the luxury of his comfortable hacienda, I would be expected to pull my own weight. So, through one of his business acquaintances he arranged a job for me moving furniture. He said that it would be a good way for me to learn about the Mexican culture and improve my Spanish while keeping me away from his beautiful daughters Juliana, Marisol, Evita, Esperanza, Mercedes, Jacinta, Paloma, Daniela, Ella, Carlota, Allegra, Tia, Daniela, Adriana and Gabriella. I started the next morning.

Around 9:00, a badly beaten moving truck arrived at our front door, engulfed in a cloud of exhaust and flames. Julio, my "compañero de trabajo" (co-worker), slithered out of the front seat and exchanged niceties with Señor Pintado before stuffing me into the back of the truck. Our first stop was a warehouse where we transferred 30 or 40 extremely heavy bed frames, sofas, dressers, tables and armoires to our truck before making our first stop. Anxious to begin learning my new language, I started reading the packing labels on the boxes and mattresses: "¡Advertencia! ¡No quite del colchón ni intente tragar!" (Warning! Do not remove from mattress or attempt to swallow!) and, "¡Extremadamente pesado! ¡No intente moverse sin una carretilla elevadora!" (Extremely heavy! Do not attempt to move without a forklift!). These were very useful phrases but a bit unsettling since there were only the two of us.

My next chance to put my Spanish to work was being the bottom man on an 8 foot sofa as we wrestled it up 10 flights of stairs. Muscling heavy furniture through tight spaces affords a genuine opportunity to use the language in the manner in which it was meant to be spoken. For instance, I learned that "¡Empuje más difícilmente, usted grasa, bastardo perezoso!" meant, "Push harder, you fat, lazy bastard!" and "¡Parada! ¡Usted aplastó mi pulgar en la pared!" is loosely translated to "Stop! You squashed my thumb into the wall!" Good to know.

After we finished our shift, Julio was kind enough to drop me off in front of the flea-bitten motel room Señor Pintado had rented for me to keep me away from his beautiful daughters Juliana, Marisol, Evita, Esperanza, Mercedes, Jacinta, Paloma, Daniela, Ella, Carlota, Allegra, Tia, Daniela, Adriana and Gabriella. After a quick shower and a reheated plate of leftover eel intestines from last night's dinner, I settled in for a night of televisíon. Since remote controls hadn't yet made their way to the Archeluta Motel, I had to crouch in front of the set, flicking the dial between commercials I couldn't understand and re-runs of popular American television series from the 1960s. I finally landed on an episode of "Hawaii Five-O" - in Spanish, naturally. You haven't lived until you've heard Steve McGarrett barking orders at Dann-o in Spanish. "¡Llegue ese cuerpo al depósito de cadavers!" said McGarrett (Get that body to the morgue!). "¡El practicar surf que va de me!" (I'm going surfing!). It is, however, a good way to enjoy Spanish.

I persevered as long as I could as Julio's apprentice but ultimately decided that there must be easier ways to learn how to speak Spanish. So, I bid adieu to Señor and Señora Pintado and his beautiful daughters Juliana, Marisol, Evita, Esperanza, Mercedes, Jacinta, Paloma, Daniela, Ella, Carlota, Allegra, Tia, Daniela, Adriana and Gabriella. I returned home after a month in Mexico and enrolled in a night school class that promised to have me speaking fluent Spanish in just 12 weeks. ¡Qué bueno!

The class was made up of 12 students - 3 guys from the Middle East, 2 from France, 3 Czechs, 1 German, 2 Russians - and me - the only American. The only thing that we had in common was that none of us knew how to speak a lick of Spanish, so we were all on common ground.

When American schools teach Spanish in the United States, they start slowly to get you thinking that you can actually learn the language and then go in for the kill. After 2 weeks of simple sentences like, "Maria tiene gusto de comer la cena en el cuarto de baño." (Maria likes to eat dinner in the bathroom.), the teacher brought us to our knees by making us conjugate the tenses of "echar un pedo" - to fart: I fart, you fart, he farts, we fart and they fart. Then, she moved on to the 7 simple present and 7 compound tenses: the present indicative, imperfect indicative, preterit, future, simple potential, present subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive, perfect indicative, pluperfect indicative, previous preterit, future perfect, compound potential, perfect subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive and of course, the imperative. It's important that you master these tenses so that you can properly say, "I fart, you fart, he/she/it farts, we fart, they fart, I farted, you farted, he/she/it farted, we farted, they farted, I am farting, you are farting, he/she/it is farting, they are farting, I was farting, I had farted, I had been farting, I will have been farting and I will have farted."

By the time the semester was over, my head was swimming and I still couldn't carry on a conversation with any of the dishwashers at my uncle's restaurant. I felt doomed to another year of screaming and waving my ski poles at my students while they continued ricocheting off the snow fences and other students in class, "¡Pare o usted se estrellará y matarse con ese cuarto de baño en el aire libre!"

Many thanks to Helen Paz for her help with the translation. I still can't speak Spanish...