The produce aisle
"Senora... Senora...," the very old man called to me as I walked past him in the produce aisle.At first I didn't turn around because I'm a senorita, not a senora. Finally, I did, and I pointed to myself and asked "¿yo?".
He nodded, and started mumbling in Spanish that he wanted me to do something for him. I looked in his face and realized what he wanted. His eyes were so clouded over he couldn't read how many kilos of tomatoes he had just put in his bag. I asked in my broken spanish, "tu quieres saber cuanto kilos de tomates?" He nodded his head.
I read the weigh and proudly announced, "dos kilos. dos kilos exactamente." He smiled at me, said "gracias", and I replied with "de nada". Finally I realized I had to get out of his way. The aisle is small, and I was staring at him because he was so sweet.
While the first time I drove kids home in the van, from VBS, we listened to O Brother Where Art Thou, the next morning I went to pick them up and we picked up the pace a little bit with Switchfoot's "New Way to Be Human." There Stephanie and I are, acting like idiots, dancing, and trying to get the kids to dance as well. They just looked at us like we were idiots. Oh well, I guess.
One day Abel had me take just boys home to Triqui, their little neighborhood, or pueblo. They were all the boys that lived in Triqui, that were 8 years old and up. Abel told me I could take them to the make road in Triqui, drop them off, and they could walk to their homes from there. Fair enough, because I have no idea where these kids live.
On the way to their pueblo Stephanie taught them to say "chillin´ like a villain", and the boys all decided that they´d rather go to the beach than home. Thus began chanting by 15-20 boys, demanding "¡a la playa! ¡a la playa!", to which I responded "¡a tu casa, a tu casa!". I wasn't quite as loud as they were.
I got to that main road, and we opened the doors. I told them Abel said they could walk. A good portion of them go out, but some of the boys insisted we take them to some court by the school, which I had no idea where that was. Stephanie caved in, shut the door, and I tried to follow directions that one of the boys gave me. I finally stopped the car, we opened the doors, and a couple boys piled out, while we still had some mainstays who were determined to get to that court. I wasn't going to deal with it anymore, because they would not listen to me.
Finally I said "aqui, or a la guarderia" (here, or to the daycare). They said the daycare, and so I took off, headed back to the main road of their pueblo, and pointed the van toward home. I wasn't very happy. I could hear the boys in the back talking quietly, and heard one of them say that there was nobody AT the daycare. Finally they said "aqui, aqui", because they wanted to be dropped off. I said no, that they were going to the daycare, that's what they wanted. I went a little further and finally dropped them off, where they happily jumped out of my vehicle and ran from the crazy, mean, white girl.
I'm probably a really bad VBS driver.
posted by Meghan @ 9:12 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home