Unbroken Glass

At first I was afraid, I was petrified…
Okay, so I’m Israeli. So what.

About five years ago my very good friend offered me to go out with an American guy.
It was getting kind of boring dating only Isreali guys. But the idea of having a date ALL IN ENGLISH scared me.
I dont have many great qualities, but I do know that one of my best is surely verbal.
I talk. A lot. And I write. A lot.
All in hebrew.
Beautiful language really, and very rich, I mean give me another word for Fadicha. See what I mean?
I told this friend I dont know english.
She said that I do.
I told her no.
She said yes.
I tried again to resist, and she said I’m just scared.
That kind of irritated me, so I had to say fine, and show the world how brave I really am And how dull my english really is.

I felt like I cant express myself in any other language. No way. That would be taking away all my personality, all my vibe.
But I went out anyway.
She said he was a drummer and I thought thats like the coolest thing there is. Not only thats he’s an American, he’s also a drummer! Or at least use to be before he came here for yeshiva but that was all besides the point.

So we met.
First I have to say that the guy who approached me had a phenomenal likeness to Bart Simpson. Very American-like of him really. I mean, he was short, blond, his hair was exactly like Bart Simpson’s, big round eyes complete with squeaky yellowish voice and manic smile.
I wanted to make a joke about it but I very tactfully decided to shut.

Too bad I didnt continue keeping quiet because I made nothing but mistakes that evening. An evening of a complete Fadicha and go check it out in the dictionary.
I sure talk a lot.

At the beginning of our date he asked me what music do I like.
That was easy to talk about in english so I talked and talked (I have a lot to say about Pink Floyd, you see) taking advantage of the fact that I feel very comfortable talking about music, and I didn’t want him to stop me and move on with it, to some other subjects that I cant cope with in english.
But he had to. First date has its own rules and you have to talk about your family, your views on religion and some other boring stuff that I feared of talking about in english.
I was very very tense, and very slow. I was thinking in hebrew, translating it all into very poor english in my mind, and then saying it out loud, trying to have the right accent along with it.
It was so exhausting I cant even begin to explain.

But he was being very sweet to me, like any Bart Simpson would be, telling me its alright to not know english that well and its fine to make mistakes, So I did.
I was telling him something about when I was a kid. I think I wanted to say something like “When I was 8 years old”, instead, and listen to this VERY carefully, I hear myself saying “When I was 8 O’CLOCK”.

The only thing I could do was just start to laugh, along with getting all red and thinking, Get me HOME! Even he couldn’t ignore that, it was so awful.
But then, a funny thing happened. I just started talking, in good english, and fast and everything.
I guess the fear of making a complete fool out of myself had faded by that point, for I already HAD, utterly, so nothing really mattered, and add to that the fact that I was in fact sitting with Bart Simpson, I mean, theres no way I can be more foolish then him, right? It relaxed me.

He really liked me, though my english was so poor I don’t know how he understood what I was trying to say. I think he liked me BECAUSE of that, its like, MEN you know? They like want to be your teacher, the big know-it-alls, they find it oh so attractive when the girl is lost (in my case it was language ) and they can come to the rescue and save us. Drop that dictionary, I’M HERE NOW!

Just so you’ll know, I didnt stay the damsel in distress.
I’ve realized that I wont learn any english from dating and I better come armed with rich and sophisticated vocabulary for future shidduchim.
I think my english is fairly good by now, after having read the first four books of the HitchHicker’s all in english and after going out with many guys who speak no word in hebrew, and, of course, after writing these fascinating shidduch stories.

After that date, my friend called me. “So, how did it go?” she asked with much enthusiasm, I had to tell her that I would really love to improve my english vocabulary and all, but if I will marry a cartoon character I will never get past Dude eat my shorts! and Aye Caramba.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 4th, 2002 at 10:31 pm and is filed under She. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.