A few years back my friend Dave and I both had a motorcycle and we took lots of trips together. We took a lot of day trips, a fair number of weekend trips, but once a year we would take a cross country trip. We went to places like Atlanta, Montreal, Copper Harbor, Bad Ax, Irish Hills, and Sioux Falls. On one of our weekend trips we had a long day in the saddle and right around sunset we wheeled into a small little country town called Baldwin Michigan.
First things first, we secured a room at the local flea bag motel and unloaded our gear. Next we fired up the cycles and headed just down the road a piece to a small beer and burger joint. The burgers were good, but the beer was going down at a rather impressive rate. Realizing that we needed to to save at least a few brain cells to pilot the bikes back to motel, we reached a point that it became obvious that it would be prudent to cut off the flow of beer. But we did order a 12 pack to go so that we could wet our whistle after our 1/4 mile ride to our room.
Having worked up a powerful thirst, we put a hurting on that poor little 12 pack once we got back to our room. This was back around 1992 and although the room had cable, the shows that were on were pretty bad. So we were pounding beers and I was in charge of the remote control, I was channel surfing around to find something interesting. After two or three passes through the 12 channels I finally stopped on this Spanish Language channel because there was this hot Mexican girl showing a lot of cleavage.
So in my beer induced stupor, being mesmerized by this well endowed senorita, I pretty much stopped channel surfing. It was some kind of a romantic drama all in Spanish with no subtitles, so I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what they were talking about. Some plots, especially the ones with low cut dresses, really don't need a whole lot of dialogue to enjoy.
Well after a few minutes Dave sees that I am really into the movie and starts asking questions about what they are saying.
Any guy that has ever been out on a hard night of drinking with their buddies knows that it is a guy law to abuse a drunk buddy if he acts stupid, or worse, if he foolishly puts himself at your mercy. Not wanting to have my man card yanked I started with some simple translation of the dialogue. And little by little as I gained his trust in my Spanish skills I started amping up the plot of the movie. After a while, I was translating everything for every character, I did everyone in different voices too. Heck, I even translated what the dog was thinking. Well the movie ended right about the time my last functioning brain cell crashed and burned. Dave had succumbed a few minutes earlier so he nodded off to the sounds of El Nimrodo dubbing the movie.
Years later, long after I had forgot about the whole Spanish movie episode, my wife and I were out to dinner with Dave and his wife. We were at a Mexican restaurant and the waitress greeted us in Spanish. She went on with some little story in Spanish that I can only assume was to impress upon us that we were in an authentic Mexican restaurant. Out of the blue Dave announces as bold as can be that I can speak fluent Spanish and that I should translate. At first I didn't know what had overcome him, but I quickly figured it out. And I am not sure which was funnier. The look of bewilderment on my wife's face that I somehow kept my Spanish speaking skills from her for 37 years. Or the look on Dave's face when he found out I yanked his chain and it took him a decade to figure it out.
Strangely, Dave's not as trusting as he used to be, and he questions me on everything I tell him now.
First things first, we secured a room at the local flea bag motel and unloaded our gear. Next we fired up the cycles and headed just down the road a piece to a small beer and burger joint. The burgers were good, but the beer was going down at a rather impressive rate. Realizing that we needed to to save at least a few brain cells to pilot the bikes back to motel, we reached a point that it became obvious that it would be prudent to cut off the flow of beer. But we did order a 12 pack to go so that we could wet our whistle after our 1/4 mile ride to our room.
Having worked up a powerful thirst, we put a hurting on that poor little 12 pack once we got back to our room. This was back around 1992 and although the room had cable, the shows that were on were pretty bad. So we were pounding beers and I was in charge of the remote control, I was channel surfing around to find something interesting. After two or three passes through the 12 channels I finally stopped on this Spanish Language channel because there was this hot Mexican girl showing a lot of cleavage.
So in my beer induced stupor, being mesmerized by this well endowed senorita, I pretty much stopped channel surfing. It was some kind of a romantic drama all in Spanish with no subtitles, so I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what they were talking about. Some plots, especially the ones with low cut dresses, really don't need a whole lot of dialogue to enjoy.
Well after a few minutes Dave sees that I am really into the movie and starts asking questions about what they are saying.Any guy that has ever been out on a hard night of drinking with their buddies knows that it is a guy law to abuse a drunk buddy if he acts stupid, or worse, if he foolishly puts himself at your mercy. Not wanting to have my man card yanked I started with some simple translation of the dialogue. And little by little as I gained his trust in my Spanish skills I started amping up the plot of the movie. After a while, I was translating everything for every character, I did everyone in different voices too. Heck, I even translated what the dog was thinking. Well the movie ended right about the time my last functioning brain cell crashed and burned. Dave had succumbed a few minutes earlier so he nodded off to the sounds of El Nimrodo dubbing the movie.
Years later, long after I had forgot about the whole Spanish movie episode, my wife and I were out to dinner with Dave and his wife. We were at a Mexican restaurant and the waitress greeted us in Spanish. She went on with some little story in Spanish that I can only assume was to impress upon us that we were in an authentic Mexican restaurant. Out of the blue Dave announces as bold as can be that I can speak fluent Spanish and that I should translate. At first I didn't know what had overcome him, but I quickly figured it out. And I am not sure which was funnier. The look of bewilderment on my wife's face that I somehow kept my Spanish speaking skills from her for 37 years. Or the look on Dave's face when he found out I yanked his chain and it took him a decade to figure it out.
Strangely, Dave's not as trusting as he used to be, and he questions me on everything I tell him now.
