Monday, May 12, 2014

Your Neighborhood Librarian Makes a List



A long time ago, a woman who had just moved back to Spain from Argentina told me a funny story about getting things done. (Was it Venezuela? One or the other.) We were talking about regional differences in spoken Spanish and she said she once found herself describing her day to a neighbor: "First we'll get the car, then we'll get the laundry and the groceries, and then swing by the school and get the children."

Only - the casual verb form of "get" that she was using to mean "pick up" was actually a profanity in Argentina. So what the aghast neighbor heard was, "First we'll fuck the car, then we'll fuck the laundry and the groceries, and then swing by the school and fuck the children."

And oh, doesn't everybody feel like that sometimes?