I had briefly considered naming this piece "Aileen in Blunderland" but feel a little Casablanca may in turn lend a little Tinseltown to what has conspired to be a very trying week. If I were Mrs Bennett I would be reclining on a four poster clutching a lace handkerchief to my brow and crying out for someone to fetch the smelling salts to restore my poor nerves. That's how it went down.
What a terribly awkward week. I'm in Starbucks again trying to look artsy and not at all like I had to Google the correct spelling of "hankerchief." Even now as I try to remember what I wanted to write I must shudder in remembered social embarrassment. Here's why;
Primero, my assigned uni sort-of-college-mother figure. A dear sweet girl who I ran into on the way out of the UAM cafeteria; but herein lies the rub Hamlet. You can't just spring Spanish speakers onto me. I need time to mentally prepare. It would be like asking Rocky to take on Apollo Creed when the guy's just stepped out of the shower. The man isn't in the zone! He needs some Eye of the Tiger, he needs protein shakes...he needs to run up the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and cry out for joy! And so do I! No, what I need is some time to translate "A pleasure to meet you" without accidentally using the noun "placer" which is more for the Belle du Jour sort of pleasure and would just end up horribly embarrassing everyone.
So I froze, open mouthed like a lazy goldfish, and could not come up with a suitable answer to Que tal? which is GCSE Spanish at its best. And because I took my own ridiculous advice "Say anything, nothing could make you look more of an idiot than you already do" and came out with "No sé que decir" (I don't knwo what to say) I'm afraid my poor Spanish guardian is now under the impression I'm more likely to ask for a lollipop than advice on the up and coming issues in mercantile law.
As if the UAM day wasn't spicy enough I have added the game Hide and Don't Seek to the fun. Now I know that a good 80% of you play this game too. Maybe you've never heard of it, maybe you don't realise you do it but don't lie to yourselves when I describe it. Join me in coming clean, holding one hand up to Heaven and say loud and proud "I too have made a complete tit of myself in front of a perfect stranger on a night out and now cannot look them in the eye least I die of shame..."
That's a bit long; we'll cut it down to something we can put on a T-shirt...
Anyway, the perfect stranger is not important. What is important is that they may have witnessed an angry monologue about Spanish internet providers, accompanied by spirited use of a mojito to punctuate amoung other things and now I have to use a mirror to look around Law Fac corridors.
Thus it was that on exiting a classroom I espied the stanger to the starboard side and kept right on walking...
...right on walking into a caretakers closet.
What could I do? They were waiting for another class. The danger would be over in mere moments. All I had to do was sit tight at base camp and hope no one came to use the mop and bucket. Which of course Juan the Janitor did.
"Usted se encuentra perdida?" He asks. Are you lost? (Polite verb form and everything, what a gentleman)
"No, de todas formas no," I reply.
He looks concerned, And so am I because we have just come to the same conclusion at the same time via mental arithmetic. If I'm not lost I must have a reason to be hanging out in his store room, and I'm not letting this get extremely, horribly "Are you trying to seduce me Miss Devlin-y" out of hand.
"Ah ha, ta luego señor..."
Escape number two and somewhere up there Harry Houdini is wondering whether this could have been incorporated into his performances.
Next there was Philosophy of Law; Jurisprudence to we legal folk and usually I, if not kick ass, then serioudly prod bottom in this arena. First lecture, who comes up but Dworkin. Can´t pronounce that if you try to roll the r my foolhardy Latinos. They all look terrifed. Our teacher smiles
"¿Quereis que lo escribo?" she asks knwoingly.
No I don´t need you to write it. I´m all up in this bitch, as I once heard Samuel L Jackson and rather liked the sound of. I am ON the spelling of Richard Dworkins name.
Except the we had to "colocaros en filas para que no podeis copiar" get into alternating rows so you can't copy
Had she seen through my ingenius scheme of sitting behind a Spaniard with a laptop so narry a word was missed? Nope; we had a test. On an article I had not read for the very legitimate reason of having no fecking clue it existeed. And it was multiple choice. And one of the questions was "Who wrote Critics?" Oh the holy mortifying shame of it all.
The last straw that broke the camels back...or summat like that...was a friendly run in with the neighbours. I'm lying, of course, we may have inadvertently held the lift door open while getting up to speed with gossip. A simple mistake, but one that made our vecino climb four flights of stairs. We didn't realise this. I didn't realise this. Thus it came as a shock which made the San Francisco quake of '06 seem like a child's hiccup when she screamed;
"Que cerrais la jodida peurta!" Close the f**king door and then, on opening her door across the hall proceeded to inform her room mate that;
"Estas putas que viven aqui no saben ni siquiera cerrar una puerta! Coño, putas!"
This translates rather charmingly as "Those whores that live across the way don't even know how to close a door! F**king whores!"
If ever a moment called for my best Kenneth Williams style; "MADAM!" that was it. I believe the Carry On reference may have been wasted though.
Other than that, well I don't think I can top that. Now if you'll excuse me I must once again recline on my four poster surrounded by Cadbury's that I may have purchased purely to cheer self up. Best case scenario, glorious chocolate induced food coma. Worst? Well I could take the putas suggestion seriously and set up a brothel. The classy kind. Maybe set up a contract, none of this pay-as-you-come-and-go nonsense. No chintz nor red velvet. Blonde or dark wood? Some tasteful nude prints? Or famous movie sex scene stills!! Yes, this could wor...
I apologise, must leave to ponder an ...ah... unrelated matter. Opinions/advice on entrepeneurship in the sex industry are, as always, very welcome
xo
No comments:
Post a Comment