Rant #3,135: Spanish Flea

I had a much better sleep last night, had no nightmares, had a dream I did remember a bit about—interviewing baseball’s all-time stolen base leader, Ricky Henderson—and that was pretty much it.

I have no idea why I was thinking about Henderson, but anything is better than having one ni9ghtmare after the other.

And it is Friday, so we are just one day away from the weekend.

The other day, I had a somewhat strange encounter at the gas station while filling up my car with gas.

I drove into the station and pulled up to the tank, got out of the car, and starting pumping gas, paying at the pump.

I was about a minute into the pumping, and another car came into the station, pulled up to the tank on the other side of where I was, and a man got out of the car, starting pumping gas himself—

And then started to talk to me in a blue streak of Spanish.

(I have no idea why he thought I would understand him in that language; did I look Hispanic that day? … maybe I did, because it was on Wednesday morning that this happened, and perhaps, with the sleep dust still in his eyes, and me with s several day growth of beard on my face, maybe that threw him off.)

I took Spanish in school through my senior year of high school, and was actually so good in the language at the time that I was offered AP Spanish, which I very stupidly did not take.

(I watched so much pro wrestling on the Spanish channels of the day—channels 41 and 47—that, as a residual effect, I picked up a lot of the language from watching those channels and the wrestling announcers—Louie Magana and Miguel Alonzo—describing the action in Spanish.)

But that was how many years ago?

Almost 50, and let me tell you, I don’t remember that much Spanish at this period in my life.

But after I told him that I did not understand him—in English, of course—I kind of went over what he said ot me in Spanish, and I was able to pick out a couple of words that I did know.

I said to him, “You are talking about the weather, aren’t you?” and honestly, I did not expect him to reply to me, based on his all-Spanish introduction to me a few seconds earlier.

He replied to me in very broken English, something like, “Si. It is cold today, not hot, supposed to be summer, but it is cold.”

(I think his reply was mainly in Spanish, too, but I am just anglicizing it for content purposes … whatever it was, I was able to pretty much make out what he said to me.)

I replied, all in English, “Yes, but it is going to get warmer in a few days.”

I then finished pumping the gas, brought the hose back to the pump, and said to him, “Have a good day,” and then pulled away my car and went on my merry way.

(I honestly did not think to say to him “Buenos dias,” because I was so perplexed by the encounter to begin with, and I guess my brain had used up its allotment of Spanish for the day.)

The guy was trying to be social and nice, and I do wish I could have understood him a bit more, so I could have had a better conversation with him, but I guess it was not meant to be.

I remember that way back when I went to school, I first took French, which for a variety of reasons—including the teacher, who literally looked down on us boys—I absolutely hated, but when I took Spanish, I was more in my comfort zone, and I excelled.

But it has been so many years since that time, and you know what they say, “You don’t use it, you lose it.”

And I have, almost entirely, but it is funny how the brain works, and it still clings to some of the Spanish that I learned all those years ago.

So in my conclusion to the final Rant of the week, I will tell you this:

“Que tengas una buena fin de semana, y te hablaré de nuevo el Lunes,”

(I think I got that right.)