New Mexi-CAN'T!

This is the second of the four-part series chronicling my vacation with the roommates to New Mexico. I may be live-blogging, bouncing a wireless signal off some errant cactus in the desert, or maybe I tried to predict how the trip will transpire ahead of time. Fact or fiction, that’s for you to decide.

Greetings from New Mexico! We’re here in lovely Albuquerque, where we’ve yet to find two people who actually know how to correctly spell their hometown. I’ve decided that after many years of knowing Nordberg and Mattias that God should have given man some sort of internal Spell Check. Since the future will be rife with robots that will have this feature as part of their standard Microsoft operating system, isn’t only fair if we plan to stand a chance. (Forgive my bleak outlook on the future of mankind – I sat next to a crying baby on the plane and since then I’ve been a tad cynical.) (Also, that would probably rule out a sequel for Akeelah and the Bee. Sorry, Morpheus.)

The culture of the Southwest no doubt is influenced by its proximity to Mexico. Most signs are in both English and Spanish, and Dave has been extremely helpful with the translation. For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Reif is an expert when it comes to the various languages of the world. When I met him, he already was fluent in French, and was semi-proficient in conversational jive. Freshman year of college, for no other reason than 17 credits were not enough knowledge for the Dave, he tried to teach himself Spanish.

From a book.

Nevermind the fact that his roommate had taken four years of the tongue in high school. Nevermind that across the hall from him was a guy who speaks it regularly when conversing with his parents. Nevermind that William and Mary had a stellar department. No, he guy had a “Learn Spanish in 15 Minutes a Day” workbook, and he was insistent this was the way to go.

Without Dave, we would have had no idea that restaurant El Dorado was just Spanish for “The Dorado.” He’s often very helpful in basic locations – he knew right away that the sign reading “Banco” was the bank. (Nevermind how Nordberg’s ears perk up when there’s fresh legal tender nearby.) If you’re hanging with Dave and it seems that he is repetitive in his Spanish, please forgive him. Not fully grasping the “repetition” method of learning a foreign language, he just assumes that the Spanish do things in threes. (Citing the Three Amigos and “Ole Ole Ole!” he may have a point.)

However, when we met a nice police officer on the street (Dave: Hombre del Coppo) we told him how I accidentally dropped my wallet in the Rio Grande, we thought he was going to be of a great help. Unfortunately, Dave felt the need to show off his growing confidence in la lengua of the locals and spouted off something that the kind law enforcement representative did not appreciate. Loosely translated, the booking officer would tell us that Dave said “Your mother is a bandicoot, and there is mayhem in the discotheque.”

I’m not sure why this was so offensive, but then again, I’m not the Spanish ace that Dave is. Although I suspect that the police officer was one of those robots I mentioned earlier. We press on, leaving Dave to fend for himself in the Albuquerque City Correctional Jail.

And then there were two.