Living In The Streets in Panama


Living In The Streets in Panama

(2 votes)

Written by Matt Landau

Saturday, March 29 2008

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"Spanish is easy" Rose told me as I struggled to find the word for shut up in the dictionary. We were driving to dinner and the subject had come up for the second time that week. "Sure it's easy Rose, compared to say, Euskera or Sanskrit or HTML. It's easy compared to those" I explained. "But at the same time, it's kind of like chess. You can learn the basics in a day or two, but you need quite a few years to get really good."

"Well you've been learning Spanish now for about twelve years. Would you say that's enough time?" She had a point. And while Rose needs little practice in the English department herself, she takes classes five times a week and is constantly using our relationship to better her fluency and put my ego comfortably to shame.

"What's that word you use in English when someone...accidentally discovers something really fortunate? Like when they're least looking for it?" she once asked. It was funny, because I had absolutely no idea what word she was describing nor what the translation of it might be. In hindsight though, the question was frighteningly accurate.

"I think it's something like serendip..." she began to answer herself.

I took my eyes off the game and tried frantically to beat her to the punch. "Oh you mean serendipity? Serendipity is like when you find something good by accident." I acted as though enlightening her on the concept of serendipity for the first time. "For example, if you were going to the mall..."

"Yeah, that's it, serendipity." She interrupted. "But what is it as an adjective?"

I looked up the word for humiliation and jotted it down on a notepad next to a stick figure drawing I had made of myself. Keep in mind I had just spent the week brushing up on my IR verbs. And as (what I thought was) an added bonus, I had also memorized a full page of Spanish vehicles, but it was these kinds of incidents that clearly established the fine line between knowing and thinking you know a second language.

"Your Spanish really sucks. I mean, it's really really bad." Rose encouraged me on another occasion. "Like, if Spanish was measured in money, I say you would probably be living in the streets."

I took the opportunity to correct her that it would be living "on" the streets, not "in" the streets. But it was too late, the argument had been made. The Spanish my teachers had given me in school amounted to lingual zilch when it came to the real world in Panama. The report cards my parents received meant next to nada.

I occasionally make visits to Baltimore to visit my parents who occupy an old house in a charming suburb of the city. Their once-lively colonial home became relatively quieter when my brother and I left for college, and my mother's empty nest syndrome was compounded significantly by the death of our family dog, Sparky, who, nearing the end of his life, had resorted to barking at the DVD player, shitting on the rug and asking for help to climb the stairs.

It was during my last visit that I formally became introduced to my parents' new dog, a replacement for Sparky who arrived, not unlike an adopted child, with the pre-assigned name Margarita. She was a plump Dalmatian of maybe four who they acquired from the local SPCA in hopes that she might fill Sparky's shoes.

"They's gone back to Gwadimala or Spaiña or somethin" I remember the adoption representative saying about the previous owners. The woman, called Benji, wore a puffy Baltimore Ravens jacket and while it seemed quite strange to me at the time, to confuse someone from those two countries, not to mention pronouncing it as Spaiña, I'd soon realize that nothing out of this woman's mouth should be unexpected. She was the product of being holed up with canines for the majority of her adult life, and had it come out that she was previously raised by African wolves, I would not have been exceedingly surprised.

"Her family, they's gone back home to Gwadimala or Spaiña with the cost of living here and all. Just too expensive. They was legal, I know that. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Mexicans, no sir." Although clearly no one had asked, Benji defended herself pronouncing the last syllable as though Mexicans were something you might find in the grocery aisle. But I thought you said they were from Guatemala or Spain? I thought to myself.

"No sirrey, I don't hate the Mexicañas one bit. You like Mexicañas don'tcha Margarita?" It was as if the aptly-named Benji had a special language with the dogs, perhaps one that had been previously rejected by...how about...the remainder of humankind.

In the ensuing months that my parents bonded with Margarita, they were forced to learn Spanish seeing as though it was the only dialect the dog understood. Tell Margarita to "sit down" and she'd look at you with a tilted head; a facial expression I've become quite comfortable using in Panama. Tell her to "sientate" though, and she'd react immediately. As if Spanish courses in college and multiple Hispanic cleaning ladies weren't sufficient catalysts, it was a dog that finally spurred my father to seize the opportunity and become semi-bilingual.

I returned home recently to a bevy of tricks and commands which my father and Margarita had clearly been practicing while mom was away at work.

"You wanna see a trick?" my dad would ask, motioning for me to follow him into the living room. He carried with him a bag of baby carrots and, upon using one of his new Spanish words like por favor or gracias, toss one in the air for the dog to gobble up. "You see that? Look at the good girl! No carbs. No fat. She loves em!"

I'm not sure if it was because I hadn't been in the States for a while that I found this stunt to be incredibly depressing. It was as if somehow Benji the administrator had rubbed off on my parents during the actual adoption transfer. It was if they, my parents, had accidentally adopted some of her.

My mother, while not as interested in the tricks, adopted her own form of communication with Margarita singing what she called a "Spanish song" while rubbing the dog on its belly. "Bonita Margarita" she sang, in a tone that one might associate with a child's TV show. "She's a senorita, muy bonita Margarita! She's a senorita, muy bonita Margarita. Chica Margarita. Bonita Chica Muy Senorita." These words were repeated over several verses to make up the bulk of the song.

It was during one of my last visits home that I finally understood what Rose had been preaching all along. Spanish isn't a difficult language to learn, as long as you're better at it than someone else. In the States, people would refer to me as a Spanish architect, calling on my services to explain a design to the gardener or clarify an order with the delivery man. But in Panama, I join the ranks of a different, more pathetic demographic, trying desperately to learn good old Spanish all over again.

(lovely stop sign image used from antiguadailyphoto.com)

Comments (1)

busca: amen brotha

Dude, you crack me up.

April 30, 2008

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