...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) When I pull my pregnancy schtick with the one (older) (Thai) cook -- it's slow and I'm paused in the long hallway to the kitchen, and he's standing back by the stoves doing nothing, so I pause and wave, and then I puff out my belly and put my hand down by my belly to wave, like my baby is waving at him -- anyhow, when I do that, he pulls out this giant knife and just gives a mock-evil smile, as he holds it out and runs his finger over the blade.
2) After I give a brief lesson in phonetics to my one (Guatemalan) coworker who is studying (English) with Duolingo -- he was asking me to repeat the tap for him (like in the American pronunciation of "latter" and "ladder"), as well as some words like "but" that have a schwa -- both, incidentally, sounds that probably don't really appear in (Spanish) or in his native indigenous language -- anyhow, after that, he out of nowhere says that don't I know, he only went through fourth grade, and he has no more schooling beyond that.
And, it's only a sentence or two, but it's like a confession of something that he's embarrassed about, and he says it sadly and gravely.
(He is the one who after he started studying [English] and made incredibly rapid progress at first, my one [Chinese from China] coworker commented on how he's really smart.)
No comments:
Post a Comment