Tuesday, May 31, 2011

This is a hospital not a Red Lobster.

There was this young latina in the ER today who did not speak any English. The nurse at the front desk asked me to bring food to her but she I was having trouble communicating to her. It's happened before-- people in the hospital think I'm Hispanic which is pretty cool since I've been mistaken for chino all my life. As I brought her some hospital sandwiches I pointed to one and said "tuna" which she responded with "tuna". I guess "tuna" means "tuna" in Spanish. But then I pointed to a turkey sandwich and did not receive a similar response. I quickly considered miming a chicken action but I didn't know if cockle-doodling would translate into Spanish since it was turkey sandwich anyway and not a fucking pollo one.

Her boyfriend (I assume that's who he was) was there for the emergency and I think her mother/aunt/grandmother. It's funny though, the older lady did not look anything like this girl. The girl was petite, or in my case, just my size. When I say petite though, I don't mean in the pixie-ish white girl kind of way. If you saw her in the woods you wouldn't think she was a smurf or elf. This girl had a nice shape to her so I tried my best to communicate to her. Her boyfriend was pushing the tuna back to me and after I said a bunch of things in Spanish I heard her say something like "no comprende". I assume she was saying I don't understand so then I just say to her lucky boyfriend "no te gusta?" Then I hear the word "otro" so I guess he just wanted something other than tuna, or maybe the bastard was just so fucking hungry that he wanted me to go back to the fridge to get another plate of dry-ass hospital bread and meat/fish combo dish.

Whatever.

This girl was cute so I went to get more anyway. I thought my mission was complete while I was chilling at the front desk when she walked over to me. Damn! Was she going to hug me? Kiss me? Thank me for feeding her hungry future ex-boyfriend? Was she going to confess her love for me?

(Dammit, Asukal, this is why you suck: you think one day some girl is going to do this exact same shit. You're the dude. Either you start taking chances with girls--with life--or you'll waste your life waiting for something so stupid that you think is blog-worthy.

She walked up to me and since she knew I didn't speak Spanish (actually, she probably thought I was just a better option than the white folks in the ER) she half-mimed an action that resembled eating out of a bowl. I gave them sandwiches not soup du jour so that did not make too much sense. She also said some Spanish and I heard "abierto". Fuck whatever that means. I used my lighting fast skills to use the Tagalog words for fork and spoon and she smiled and said "si".

We had no forks in the department and I didn't feel like going out of my way for her boyfriend so I just got some plastic spoons from the back. Then she reminded me and said something with the word "tomar". It was okay since she mimed lifting her closed hand up to her mouth and tilting it up-- she wanted somethings to drink. I volunteer in a hospital, by the way, not in Red Lobster (although the RL my family went to for Memorial day had horrible service that included the waiter spilling ice on our table and forgetting that we don't eat with our hands and need utensils to eat our vegetarian calamari). So I give her some juice.

This experience at least showed me that I'd like to one day be with a Latina chick and use my fake Spanish to communicate to her while I hold her close (actually, I always think about holding girls close).