two years of latin has not paid off
We picked The Boy up Friday night from an overnight Spanish language camp he went to with his school. When we picked him up, he was wound up like you wouldn’t believe. I’d probably guess it was a combination of being away from home, getting sugared up and hanging out in a dorm room for 36 hours with a bunch of boys his age.
I was all excited to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant to celebrate his camp, but the first thing he said when he got in the car: If I never have to see any kind of Spanish food again, I’ll be so happy. So scratch that idea. We gave him a choice for dinner. He chose Old Country Buffet (aka ‘The Trough’) and you know what the first thing he put on his plate was? A taco salad. Seriously.
After his fourth plate of jello and popcorn shrimp, he had a breadstick on his plate that The General really wanted. Instead of just handing it over, he made The General ask for it politely. In Spanish. Pass the bread, please. That’s all we had to say to get the bread. In case you’re curious, it’s “pasar el pan, por favor”. We didn’t find that out until The Boy had eaten half the breadstick.
Later in the weekend, The General and I were killing some time in the car, when I made an attempt to put together my own Spanish sentence using the words I’d learned at dinner the night before. The only thing I could come up with was: “Pase las chichis dulces, por favor.” Loosely translated using my Spanish vocabulary, it means “Pass the sweet tits, please!”
I figure it’s at least something Mel Gibson would be proud of.
