reposted from the Baja Report blog 4/10/2016
Never sacrifice a good story for the truth…andy b
So I wasn’t going to write any more blogs this year. My thoughts have moved from tacos and beer to Sonoma County zinfandel and grass feed beef with blue cheese, pommes frites and locally grown farm to table artisanal salad. $80 at Chez Bistro Trattoria. But I just gotta do one more.
As you know from my famous blog Hardware Store Spanish I have long resisted speaking Spanish. Just yesterday I had a wonderful opportunity to not speak Spanish. The police drove into our yard in their nice 4 door pickup. The passenger side cop (good cop) yelled out a greeting to me. I responded, “Hola Senors, Ich spreche no mucho Spanisch. Mein frau specke Spanisch gut. Ein momento.” The cop said, “Como, Senor.” Then Sal came out. Sal asked them if there are any ladrons (thieves) in the hood. They said, “No ladrons ahorita (no thieves right now).” Then she gave them 100 pesos for “coffee” ($6.50 US). They love coffee.
I have used German (my only foreign language unless you count hardware store Spanish) as a defensive weapon in Mexico. I learned a little German in college. I wanted to learn Italian so I could argue with my mother in one of her native tongues (the other was French which she used for praying and math. Italian was for yelling.) but it wasn’t offered. One day I was at the airport In San Jose del Cabo picking up my son when I drove the wrong way on a newly unmarked 1 way street in front of terminal uno. I got pulled over by a Policia Federal (Darth Vaders of Mexico). He told me in Spanish that I was driving the wrong way. I thought, at first, that maybe he noticed I wasn’t 10 and 2 o’clock on the steering wheel. But no I was going the wrong way on the strasse. I said, “Ich bin ein tourista und Ich speche kein Spanisch.” He repeated his admonition in a louder voice. I repeated my response in a louder voice. He repeated, I repeated. I was just about to get out my FAKE GERMAN DIPOLMATIC PASSPORT that I made in FotoCounterfit, when I noticed that his dark glasses were fogging. He put his hands on his hips, looked at me, looked at the street, looked at me, and then pointed the right direction for the street. He got back into his death star patrol car and drove off (the wrong way). German just confounds these poor Darth Vaders. If I had taken Estonian in college I could have really confused the cop. Very few Estonian touristas. Continue reading “El Dialogo”
