Things I did not know

What do you call a person who speaks three languages?  Tri-lingual

What do you call a person who speaks two languages?  Bi-lingual

What do you call a person who speaks one language?  An American

That would be me.

It never occurred to me that I might have a handicap when I booked a volunteer speaking gig in Santa Ana.  I don’t speak Spanish fluently.  Oh, I can say important things like “yo tengo hambre” and “qué guapo es este hombre.”  I can ask “¿Dónde está el baño?” but for the life of me I can’t say “Welcome to our presentation on Disaster Preparedness.” 

I looked out over sixty or so smiling faces.  “Welcome,” I said, stretching my arms out in front of me in a welcoming gesture.  After my greeting, the hundred and twenty eyes gazed at me, faces still smiling.  But that smile when you have no idea what someone just said.  That’s when Concepcion stepped in.  “Bienvenido a nuestra presentación en la Preparación para Desastres,” she translated. 

“Wow,” I exclaimed, “I’ve never had my own interpreter before.  I should get one of these for my husband.”  I pointed to Concepcion.  I waited my turn and Concepcion exposed my wish for an “espouso comprende.”  (Loosely translated to a “husband who gets it.”) Never has anyone hung on my words like Concepcion. 

I talked about earthquake preparedness, literally shaking and trembling in my shoes, and fires, while huffing and puffing, trying to get the point across.  I fought the urge to slip my body under a doorframe.  I even threw in a glamour shot pose when I urged them to include a recent photo with their emergency contact information.  When Concepcion said a word I recognized, I parroted her in her foreign tongue.  The crowd nodded at my super-American language skills.

I wanted to share about my Whittier earthquake experience that cost me a computer, a printer, all the dishes I owned (I just couldn’t bring myself to buy Melmac like Mom), and even the ceramic ear on Mary’s donkey.  (The earthquake had been in October.  I can’t remember if I was late or early in my choice of decorations.)  My youngest held onto the fear of quakes for days, maybe weeks.  Afterwards he’d slept in the trundle bed rolled out next to my twin bed.  I’d found him in the doorway after I’d crawled over him in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.  He thought I was another tremor.  But I didn’t tell the crowd any of this.  It would have lost something in the translation.

Most people felt headaches coming on.  Not me.  I sensed aftershocks.  This was one of those disastrous aftershocks.  A short video of the recent Japan quake and tsunami wouldn’t play.  “There’s no language barrier in disasters,” I improvised.  “We understand and we feel for others.”  I pulled my hands in to my chest, like my heart was pulsating. 

“I smell something burning,” Sonja, my English speaking counterpart, said.  She pulled a backpack (nylon polyester may be strong, but not melt proof) off the heated projector showing a PowerPoint slide on the wall.  The bag contained a 72-hour disaster kit — the morning’s raffle gift.  “Take one of the band-aids out of the first aid kit and place it over the burned hole,” I suggested.

So what did I learn today?

• I’m funnier in English than Spanish.  However, disasters don’t offer you an array of humorous material any way.
• Dumped into a situation where the ability to communicate is limited, everyone turns Italian, talking with body gestures and hand motions.
• Concepcion and I could never take our show on the road as a comedy team.  You can’t really get on a roll when alternating sentences. 
• Nothing goes quite like you expect.
• People are gracious and roll with the punches, quakes, and language barriers.

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