Long ago, in a far away galaxy.... Oh wait. That's the beginning of Star Wars. Although, in many ways, my former, pre-divorced life does seem like a different world. Anyway....
I was married to a former refugee from another country, and when we met he didn't speak English very well. He used to joke that he was illiterate in two languages, which is not as funny as he thought. One of his main problems with English lies in his native language - they do not have the plural form of a word, it remains the same from one to infinity. So he is constantly struggling to pluralize words, which leads to some interesting statements. For example, he will ask if you want some soups, to which you cannot help but reply, "No thanks, one is enough." He had two childrens, 300 suit, and one kitchens, which brings me to another funny story.
Incidentally, I do like to give credit where credit is due, and he picked up language skills at lightning speed. Considering that he arrived in the US with no English whatsoever, he was more or less fluent within a couple years, and actually had a pretty fair vocabulary, so he did really well for himself. But there were some words that constantly seemed to give him trouble, which, because his basic skills were normally so good, made the mistakes funny. One of those words was kitchen. He could never remember the right word, and even now, you will occasionally hear him say chicken instead of kitchen. Abbott and Costello all over again.
Anyway, one day we went to the Cities, and on our way home, we stopped at this Chinese restaurant we frequented. We had an unusually good waitress that day, and being in the food service industry at that point, my ex was very aware of how important it can be for a waitress to be complimented to her boss. So he called the manager of the restaurant over to our table, a Chinese man with an equally strong accent, and in his most serious, self-important voice, declared that, "Your waitress is the most curious I have ever had."
Ah ha. At this point, as I have realized not only what he said, but the implications for the waitress, I am both rolling on the floor laughing while trying to explain that Mr. Pretentious really meant "courteous." I spluttered. I had tears rolling down my face. I was unable to speak.
An interesting observation I have made over the years is that when you have two people with strong foreign accents speaking English to each other, they are even less likely to understand each other than when speaking to a native English speaker. The manager, already upset, had clearly decided he must have heard wrong. So naturally, he asked my ex to elucidate. "What did you say?" Not realizing he was using the wrong word to begin with, and already accustomed to my irreverent laughter by then, my ex repeated, with gravitas, "I just wanted to make sure you knew your waitress is very, very curious."
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!!!!!!! I am still struggling to regain my breath and explain as I see the manager's face getting increasingly upset. It was clear that waitress was in a for a hard time, and I was the only one who was going to save her.
I finally pulled myself together enough to blurt out, "He means COURTEOUS!" The manager simply shook his head and walked away. I didn't blame him. I wouldn't want anything to do with it either, if it wasn't so funny.
That, however, was not the funniest language related incident we ever had.
If I may get off track for moment.... I realize there may be those who stumble across my online ramblings and think that I am taking easy pot shots at a man who is not here to defend himself. You would be right. He left. It was his choice, and because he did, I now get to tell my story however I want to. And that is with humor. It is the way I get through life, which has not, by and large, been all that funny. And if you want to know the truth, he usually laughed along with me, because although he has his faults, he knew a good joke when he heard one. Even when it was him.
So, back to the story. One afternoon we had a fight about cherry pie. I will write about that another day, but let's just say, I was right. I was pretty angry, so I decided to take my little boy and go out for a drive. He was about five at the time, and I was pretty mad, so we were gone for awhile, driving around in the countryside near where we lived. By the time I had cooled off enough to go home, my ex had run to the store.
I was still plenty upset, so I was in a pretty serious mood when he walked in and the fun began. This was well before his rainbow period, when he wore mostly black, solid colors, no prints. Nothing fun, nothing exciting, nothing that would stand out in a crowd. On this day, he would stand out in any crowd. He was wearing the most exciting pair of shorts I had ever seen. They were white, with geometric designs all over them, in a thin cotton fabric that looked suspiciously like... no, it couldn't be; BOXER SHORTS.
I took a second look, and yep, that front placket was there all right. This ultra serious stuffed shirt just walked in from the outside world in boxer shorts. I gasped. I said, "What on earth are you wearing? [You may notice that is an ongoing theme where my ex-husband's clothing is concerned.] Are those BOXER SHORTS?"
He looked at me, totally bewildered by what had set me off, and said, "They are short. I just got them at WalMart. I thought they were pretty cool. What your problems?"
I started to giggle, I couldn't help myself. I said, "They are boxer shorts. Underwear. Boxer shorts are underwear. You have been running around the countryside in UNDERWEAR!"
Well, he was not one to take THAT lying down, so he stood his ground and replied, in high dudgeon, "They are NOT underwear. They are SHORT."
Well, they may have been short, all right, but they were certainly boxer shorts, and I felt it was essential to get across to him that, as funny as it may be to me, he probably didn't want to continue wearing underwear around the neighborhood. I got out the dictionary, to show him the entry for boxer shorts, which would have been an excellent idea, except that he was not prepared to concede that is what they were.
So I asked him where in the store he found them. He told me they were on a little table in the main aisle. I said, "Were they in front of the clothes or the underwear section?" His irritated response? "They were in the men's wear section."
Clearly, he was not going to give way to logic or reason. So I said, "We need to go to WalMart so you can show me where you found them." He was all for it, mortally offended at this point that I didn't take his word for it that he knew better than I did what he was wearing. So off we went, me barely restraining myself, him maintaining a wounded silence, and Adam happy because he thought he might get a matchbox car, since that was usually what happened when we went to WalMart.
We walked into the store, the Peacock in full, fan tailed feather, and he strutted down that aisle in haughty splendor. And then, there it was, the table filled with shorts just like the ones he was wearing - a live mannequin right there in the WalMart. And in a large sign above it, for all the world to see, it said "Boxer Shorts."
He looked at the sign. He looked down at his fancy new shorts. He looked at me, irritation replaced with panic and humiliation. He grabbed his T-shirt, pulled it down as far as it would go and hissed at me, "Let's go." Which I would have been happy to do, really I would, except that I was literally lying on the floor, underneath the men's jackets, tears streaming down my face, out of breath and laughing harder than I have ever laughed in my entire life. I felt for him, really I did. I understood all too well the vagaries of the English language, and knew that he had been tripped up by a colloquialism that he couldn't possibly have been expected to appreciate. But it was funny, too. Something that even he was willing to allow, once he got home again and replaced the boxers with a pair of the usual black variety.
He kept those shorts for a long time, and wore them at night. He paid good money for them, and he wasn't going to waste it. And besides, he still thought they were fun. But he finally gave it up when he realized that every single time he put them on, I would start laughing uncontrollably, instantly transported back in time to one of the funniest moments of my life.
