I was on a trip to the US and I was at a rest stop in Ohio. Two boys and a girl had the following conversation in Polish.
“That’s your kind of girl, Tommy.”
“No way, she’s too cute.” Said boy #2.
“I think you like her.” Said the girl.
“She’s an American, even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to say much to her in English.” Said Tommy.
“She’s literally the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” said boy 2.
“Hey,” said the girl.
“I bet you want to make out with her,” said boy 2. “I dare you to kiss her.”
“You’re on,” said Tommy.
Tommy walks over to me, trying some awkward form of a sneak attack.
“Sorry, but I’m a lesbian,” I say to him when he gets close, in perfect Polish.
The look on his and his friends’ faces was priceless.
In 1985 I had dinner with a friend who had brought a Peruvian, who used the name John, with her home across the ocean. The relationship ended badly. He was abusive, hit her, and would not tolerate that she was an independent woman. She left him. It lasted for just a couple of months, so I had not had time to meet him yet, but she was sobbing through the whole story during dinner, not understanding how he could go from super charming to abusive in just a few weeks.
When the the dinner was over, I went to the metro and sat down next to three people who spoke Spanish. After a couple of minutes, I suddenly realized that I was hearing the exact same story in reverse, and that the guy sitting next to me was my friend’s ex. Since I am blonde and blue eyed, and Spanish was very uncommon in Norway at the time, they obviously did not think I would understand anything they said.
The metro ride lasted for 15 minutes, and he went on and on about how terrible my friend had been to him, going from sweet, to withdrawn to down right cold (leaving out the part where he had abused her). I could see that he was trying to charm the girl he sat next to, who was all concerned about the ‘horrible’ treatment he had had. Just as we were approaching my stop, he was saying agitatedly: She would not let me make the decisions! And then she left me! How could she do such a cold hearted thing to me? To me!
I had said nothing all through his rant, but as I got up to get off, I turned to him and said: ‘Well you see, John, Norwegian women don’t particularly enjoy being beaten’. And then turning to the girl next to him: ‘And my guess is that Latin American women are not too crazy about that either’.
For a couple of seconds he said absolutely nothing. He just looked at me in total shock and disbelief. Here was this perfectly strange blonde woman whom he had never met, but who obviously knew his back story and addressed him by name. Then he turned to the girl and yelled, ‘but I had to beat her! She wanted to dominate me, and I could not take that, as a man!’
I thought ‘gotcha’, and left, and as the metro left the station I could see him frantically speaking to the girl, whose body language had gone from smiling and flirty to cold and withdrawn in a second.
And I was happy to potentially having saved another girl from being abused.
This happened a few years back.
I stood in the passage, waiting for the elevator with a guy next to me. As soon as it comes we both enter it and find two girls in it. Both of them had same features. It was safe to conclude they were sisters.
The guy was cute and too fair.
A moment later, one girl says to the other in Tamil, that I do not match with that guy. He should have a hotter girlfriend, and that I looked way below average.
I was stumped.
Just when I was about to leave the elevator, I turned to them and said in my broken Tamil,
“I am married to a much hotter(I used this word as I didn’t know it’s translation in Tamil) guy than him. You can go and talk to him if you want.”
I turned and the door closed. And a very faint, I am sorry could be heard.
I had put this incident past me, when a month later I bumped into the same guy. He smiled at me showed me his wedding ring. And spoke with a mischievous grin that he is married too in pure Tamil.
Surprised and totally unexpected!
I was shopping in a sports store in Boulder Colorado in the 1990s. For those of you not familiar with Boulder, it was about 95% white, 4% hispanic, and 1% a mix of everything else.
My friend Rick is 6′2″, blue eyed, and curly haired. I’m 6′5″, and we are both clearly very white. Of course, Rick spent 3 years in Japan teaching English – after having gained fluency in Japanese before going abroad.
There is a mom and son in the store near us. Both are Japanese and conversing exclusively in Japanese. The son is being an obnoxious pain in the butt, as spoiled kids often are when they are in public and want something that their parent isn’t giving them. This goes on for about 3 minutes near us, with the mom giving the most pathetic efforts at discipline to control her son.
Finally, after he says something very rude to her, she replies “That isn’t appropriate. Don’t say that.”
He replies “Why? It doesn’t matter, we’re speaking Japanese!”
Her halfhearted retort, out of desperation and with no sincerity, is “You never know who can speak Japanese.”
Standing only 10 feet away, my friend replies, without looking up, in perfect Japanese, “You are right, you never know.”
As we walked away, trying to suppress a big fat grin, both mom and son were staring with their mouths wide open, never having thought for a moment that ANYONE else in Boulder, much less either of these 2 very white dudes, actually could speak Japanese.
When I was in seventh grade, we had two Mexican transfer students in my gym class. I spoke a little Spanish, but never enough to feel comfortable to try talking to them—I was convinced I’d end up getting lost in their rapid-fire exchanges.
Maria and Ana mostly kept to themselves during class, and I would try to listen in, hoping to find a place I could maybe jump in.
I finally caught a snatch of conversation where they were complaining nobody in the class spoke Spanish so they always felt lonely, and I was immediately embarrassed. All this time I’d never even tried to say hello when I could have let them know I knew at least the basics.
So I went over and said, in my very broken Spanish, “I speak a little, but not very well. I can try, though!”
Maria and Ana stared at me for a moment and then burst into laughter. They threw a few sentences at me, which I understood to be an invitation to play soccer.
Thankfully, you don’t need to say much when you’re chasing after a ball, but I like to think we got along well enough from that point on.
As many of you know (if you don’t just check out my profile) I was raised in the States. Not born there, but living there for a decade since you were two tends to make you an American (to an extent).
I look like an average Panamanian though.
See? Like an average Panamanian Joe.
So, one day I’m with my dad in a very touristic part of Panama City called Panama la vieja; a place I’ve never been before (hence, living in the States).
So a group of what I guessed were Americans came by and they looked plenty lost.
I was willing to help them, but I didn’t know if they were actually lost. So they go and ask this guy (who looks like another tourist) for directions in English.
That guy responds in Italian.
They thought he would know English, I’m guessing because he was white.
I facepalmed.
So now I walked over to them, and they looked at me and one of the younger folk (a kid maybe a year older than I was) rolled his eyes.
“The Latino won’t be able to help us, he probably doesn’t even speak English,” he muttered.
The mom nudged him and told him to be quiet.
I just smirked.
The person I assumed was the dad started speaking in Spanish.
Very weak Spanish if I do say so myself.
“Hola, mai pudai ajudar pofafo?” he asked.
“Si” I replied.
“But I’d rather speak in English cause my Spanish isn’t really perfect,” I told them with a somewhat southern American accent.
I had the satisfaction of watching the kid’s jaw drop and the mother blush in embarrassment as she knew that I had understood what her son had said a few moments before.
So I gave them directions to a shop a few streets away and went back to tell my dad the story.
People, just because someone looks like a native, it doesn’t mean (s)he is one. (Well I am, but you get the idea.)
Cheers!
I can give you tons. You may notice that I really do not look Russian. So while working in the UK. Russian tourists take it that no one speaks Russian, especially me.
On the train with a large group of Russian teenage school girls and their teachers. The girls seating at my table, started been teenage rude. Started comparing feet sizes, hands and male anatomy. One looked under the table at my size 13 shoes and asked if her friends believe the “black man” myth.
Been the mean ass I am. I said in fluent Russian “girls what would your teachers say if they heard you”
Poor girls kept looking for empty seats elsewhere for the rest half hour journey.
Another time on the underground in London. A woman with two early teen girls sitting across me. The naughty girls in Russian kept comparing people around them to animals.
Giraffe for the lady with a long neck,
Hippopotamus for the obese lady and so on.
They now started attaching an animal to me. They settled for elephant because of my size. At this point I stretch over to the three, and asked the mother in Russian how long had she owned the two turtles. They got off at the next stop.
On a London bus. A group of people were speaking Ukrainian. Then one of them said in Ukrainian which is very similar to Russian. “Bet these silly English think we are speaking Russian”
At which I replied in English. “ No we know that you are speaking Ukrainian”
They obviously understand, as they kept quiet.
The best story did not happen to me.
A mixed race girl was on the top floor of a double deck London bus. Behind her was a large group of Yoruba tourists from Nigeria.
They started criticising the poor girl in Yoruba language. From the hair to her mode of dressing.
At which point, the girl stood up and gave them a washdown in perfect Yoruba language. They sat for the next five minutes in silence as she poured the best Nigerian insults possible in Yoruba.
As She got off the bus, she told them in pidgin.
“Close ya mouth, fly wan enter”
(Close your mouth, a fly is about to fly in)
