Alright, I officially need to start working on my Spanish.
I was at Rosa’s grill over in the market at lunch today, and the girl who was helping me at the counter didn’t speak hardly any English. It didn’t annoy me or anything, that’s not where I’m going with this. No, what happened was I started ordering in Spanish without even really thinking about it. And as soon as I started speaking spanish to a Latino, I was reminded with a crushing sense of embarrassment just how bad my Spanish sucks.
I know enough Spanish to follow along with really basic things, and I mean I should be able to order off of a menu. The problem is that as soon as I try, I become extremely self conscious. I feel like the whitest of white white guys ever. And most of the time when I’m in this situation Latinos who’ve come up north here kinda give me this look. Not like a dirty look, more of an apprehensive look. Like, “Oh god, he thinks he can speak Spanish, I’m pretty sure this asshole is about to get bossy.” Which is not me at all, though I’m guessing that that sort of thing probably happens to immigrants here (maybe a lot).
Anyway. The girl at Rosa’s was super sweet about it. She actually seemed relieved that I knew a bit of Spanish. Even if their food weren’t super awesome and super cheap, they would get the win for that.
But still. I eat Mexican food like I was raised in Texas or something. I’ve even gotten to cooking it lately, which means that I’ve been frequenting the Mexican grocery stores. I always have these strange encounters there. Like, there’s this cheese, it’s the most amazing god damn cheese ever, it’s like Mexican string cheese basically, and you order it at the deli counter and the dude pulls off a giant rope of it from this huge cheese knot. The dudes always call it “fajita cheese”. This not being good enough for me, a foodie, I ask what kind of cheese is it? “Fajita cheese!” they say. And I press again, and the dude realizes that I’m asking where it’s from or if it has another name, and he just kind of mutters it under his breath, way too fast for my whitest of white guy ears to pick up, and we end up just keeping with the fajita cheese thing. (Btw, it turns out the cheese comes from Oaxaca–you can find it in some Latino grocery stores as queso de Oaxaca. It’s fresher at the deli counter, though.)
What I could have said to the deli counter dude is, “De donde es eso?” Which I think is the right way to say, “Where is this from?” But I’m not really sure. And it’s that hesitation that is killing me and making me feel like the whitest white guy ever. I need to own it. My accent will probably always suck, but at least I can speak with confidence and not sound like an idiot.
So maybe I should get on this. I really don’t have time for it right now, but I should look into taking a class. Preferably one that ends in a trip down south or something, or at least has some sort of interactive component to it. This is something that I’ve been putting off for way, way too long.
