A funny thing happened ...
From my bag of "New things that have been happening to me...."
My wife and I went to a Chinese Restaurant this evening for dinner. We live in a relatively small town and this is a fairly popular restaurant, and there are many Hispanics that eat there. It's kind of a joke with my wife and I, we say "If you want to speak Spanish, go to the Chinese Restaurant", because there are always some of our Hispanic friends there. Tonight, we saw a young lady and her baby from our church, so we decided to eat together. Our friend, who is from Honduras, seemed to know some of the staff really well, and was talking with them before we sat down at our table. Two of them were speaking in Spanish to our friend, at least from what I could hear of the conversation. During dinner, our Honduran friend would talk to me in Spanish, and tried to talk with my wife in English. Some times she would say "you tell her" because she couldn't make herself understood in English. We talked for a couple of hours, and during this time, when our friend would go back to the buffet to get something else for the baby to eat, the Chinese waitresses could hear me and my wife trying to console the baby (in Spanish) while his mother was gone (a new experience for me). When we were leaving, I had picked up both checks and was going to pay for dinner. While standing in line waiting to pay we were still conversing back and forth in Spanish. When we reached the cashier (the owner of the restaurant), holding up both checks, she asked me if I wanted to pay for both of them. In Spanish. I can barely understand this lady's English, and here she was speaking to me in Spanish. I was a bit taken back at first, I thought she must be talking to someone else. I looked behind me, no, she was talking to me. Had this gray-haired green-eyed gringo been mistaken for a Hispanic person, by a Chinese person? I have no idea, but maybe I don't have to buy the colored contact lenses now.
Little things like this seem to make my day.....
3 Answers
Hehe... that is cute!
You know, here in Mexico there are people with light skin, blonde hair, and light colored eyes. So you really never know 
You rock, Jack! I'm only at the beginner level but the Latinos who know me around town now greet me in Spanish because they know I'm trying to learn and they respect that. It's a nice feeling. In a much less impressive example than yours, but still gratifying, was when I was eating lunch at the counter of a diner and one waitress was telling the other in Spanish whch customers she had including . . . "el hombre aquí" meaning me. I answered back, "Deberias decir 'el hombre guapo aqui.' " It got a good laugh and now they always greet me in Spanish when I deliver the mail there. (Soy cartero en Green Bay, Wi.) --GaryTruckey
That's a great story, Jack! I hope to be at that level some day. Congratulations! It sounds like you've made it to the next level.
