I was on the bus yesterday and there were two older Hispanic men, I’d say in their mid 40s.
A young black woman (I’d say in her mid 20s) who was quite obese gets on the bus. Even though she was large she was more like a tank than just all over fat. But she was big.
She kind of plows through everyone and finds a seat.
Then I’m not paying attention, and all of a sudden she gets up and goes to the Hispanic men:
“So I’m a fat pig, am I”?
The men just stop and look.
She says, “Don’t look at me like I"m all stupid, Just because I’m [insert N-word] doesn’t mean I can’t understand you. You wanna hear some Spanish, I’ll give you some Spanish.”
Then she starts screaming at them in Spanish,. The bus driver turns and tells her to calm down and she then goes back to her seat.
Lesson: Spanish is more common than one would think
I know people are going to chime in with how offended they are, but I just want to point out before the shrieking starts that this is the most offensive part.
Yeah, I’ve been caught in that trap, too. “Older” just means “older than me”, don’t get your knickers in a twist, granny.
ETA: I was at the zoo a couple of years ago and some Spanish men were walking behind me. I listened as they started talking, in Spanish about my ass and abotu the ass of another woman near me, and some rather nasty dirty stuff. I finally turned around and said, in broken Spanish, “I understand what you are saying,” and then in English, “Assholes”.
It didn’t faze them, although they did stop talking about our asses. They just giggled (and I do mean giggled) inanely.
Also, there are a lot of black Latinos in the world. Shitloads, and I happen to be one of them. I really, really hate when on applications the choices are “Black (Not Hispanic or Latino)” and “Latino.” Grr!
Reminds me of the David Sedaris story during the time he lived in France.
Two American tourists on the metro start loudly speculating that he is a sneak thief and wondering when he last bathed. He thinks of screaming that he is an American (and had a shower that morning), and anyway many French people do understand English. It’s not some secret code! Instead he stays quiet so they don’t apologize and he can just hate them with pure fury.
Ha ha, it seems like whenever I overhear a conversation in Spanish, it has to do with someone else’s ass. I really don’t look like someone who would know Spanish, so I surprise a lot of people. I just wish I were less shy about it.
It was the weirdest thing, because most of the time, Spanish people think I look Spanish. (I don’t agree, but I am brown and don’t exactly look Indian, so people get confused. Even Indian people.) I’ve had abuelas come up to me and yell at me for not speaking my native language (spanish), and I’m all “But I DO! I speak Hindi!” And then these people totally assumed no one around them spoke Spanish.
My dad was in Mexico in the 20’s. He had met some American college students there. Between their formal and my dads street spanish they were doing OK until they gotto one shop. They could not make themselfs understood by the woman behind the counter. Finally my dad says to the students lets get out of here this pig can not understand anything we are saying. The woman behind the counter looks at him and answers well sir if you speak in English I can understand completely. The owner will return in about 5 more minutes.
Dad said he just excused himself and left the store. He used this lesson that he got to teach us kids to watch our mouths and what we said about others.
Back about 25 years ago, I worked with a woman who had married a Greek man. She learned enough greek to be able to speak conversationally, and very much enjoyed having snarky little side conversations with him where she made nasty comments about everyone in the area. (Tells you what a piece of work she was)
Then one day she forgot where she was and did this in church surrounded by his family.
I live about an hour from an Amish community, and it is amazing how personal the comments will be about the ‘English’ (non-Amish people). Of course, I’m grinning, because I speak low German. Every once in a while, I’ll throw in a comment, just to see them nearly swallow their tongues.
In my area, I frequently encounter people speaking many different languages to each other as if they were talking in a secret code that no one can understand in the slightest. Even if I don’t understand any of the words (which I often do, since I know Spanish) it always amuses me that these people don’t realize that there is a lot of information conveyed in their tone of voice, mannerisms, and other universal cues, like laughter, etc.
