YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT NOW?

Being that we were on our way to a four-month lifestyle change deep in the heart of France, we had been planning many ways to tackle the language barrier.  But happily, for the first portion of our trip anyway, we could put those concerns out of our minds and just breathe it all in....

....Ahhh, Scotland!  So far, we loved Scotland.  We loved the friendly people, loved the castles, loved the scenery and we stopped to gab with the locals every chance we got.

        We even loved grocery shopping, particularly in Greenoch where we found a Tesco grocery store with a Travelator.  Travelators are the coolest contraption ever: they’re like escalators, but smooth.  Like the moving sidewalks one would find at the airport, but they go UP to the second floor.  Incredibly, they also go back DOWN, and are somehow specially formatted so that your grocery cart does not even slip an inch.
       That’s more than I can say for my son, who tried very hard to slip down the Travelator, but I digress.
       We started our grocery shopping journey by riding the Travelator up to the second level where we expected to find housewares and maybe some toys for the kids.  But quel surpris, there was a restaurant, too, and boy oh boy were we excited.
       “I’ll grab us some coffees and you go look for some toys,” I said to Trevor.  “You want a cappuccino?”
       “No, just black,” he replied. 
       I practically skipped to the lunch counter to review the menu of hot beverages.  I didn’t see anything that said ‘Americano’, which is European slander for ‘black coffee that no European would be caught dead drinking’.  But!  I did spy a man carrying a tray with a cup of coffee on it, and it looked kind of black.  It was too big to be an espresso, but not frothy enough to be a latte.  I took a stab.  “Excuse me, sir, what kind of coffee is that?” 
       “Blah blah mumble,” he told me. 
       “Pardon me?” I asked. 
       “It’s a mumble mumble blah blah,” he said.  I eyed his slightly foamy coffee suspiciously.  Not fancy enough to be a cap.
       I placed my order.  “I’ll have what that man is drinking, but without the foamy part on top,” I said.
      “You mean a blah blah mumble?”  Yes, I nodded, I meant that.
The lunch counter lady disappeared and re-appeared in ten seconds with a foamy coffee.  “No, I’m sorry, I meant ‘Americano’,” I said politely.
       “This is mumble mumble mumble,” she told me.
       “But it’s foamy…”
       “Did you want espresso?”  I did not.  “Latte?”  I did not.  “Then you want barely audible blah blah.”
       “But I don’t want the foam,” I explained in earnest.  Something about her accent and Coffee Man’s accent was harder to understand than all the previous Scottish accents I’d heard, and I began to suspect that one of us was not on the same page... 
       We stumbled through a few more exchanges before I learned that the coffee at the lunch counter came out of a machine rather than a pot, and machines in Scotland create just enough fake foam to really trick a foreigner.  
         Ultimately, it looked yucky. “Well….okay, I guess I’ll have that,” I finally decided.  “To go, please.”
       “We don’t have take away,” the lady replied.  I hesitated for what I’m sure was just a few seconds.  “We don’t have take away.”
       Aha!  I thought to myself (lightbulb, lightbulb).  “Why not?” I blurted out. 
       “I don’t have any take away cups.”
       “Can I buy a take away cup and bring it back to you?” I finally asked, squinting my eyes in concentration.  Boy, one had to really get one’s wheels turning to figure out this coffee stuff.
       Lunch Lady sounded like she had never heard of this idea, but she said she supposed I could.  No, she didn’t know if the store sold take away cups. 
       But the best was yet to come, for the checkout lineups were long and the kids were getting rambunctious.  Trevor and I were tired, and our shopping cart was full.  After scanning a dozen of our items, Cashier Girl turned to me and said, “Yawhametahepyabahgythings.”
       “Pardon me?” I asked. 
       “Dyawhametahepyaputbahgyin,” she repeated, almost.
       “Um… I’m sorry, I still didn’t quite catch that,” I said, smiling.  She spoke again.  I strained to listen for inflections in her voice that would help me understand her, but there were no telltale signs of what the heck she was talking about. 
       She cocked her head.  I cocked mine.  She yawned.  I squinted.  Who was this, Lunch Lady’s sister?
       “JuswuhndahniyawhanIshouldhehwidyabahgs.”
       I turned to Trevor in exasperation but he had nothing to say.  So I gave it my all: “Once more?...“I can’t quite understand.”…”You want me to do what now?” 
       Shawn and Annabeth had already noticed me engaging in adult conversation and so were busy whining for food, taking things out of the cart, pushing each other and generally dropping onto the floor in fits of self-absorbency.  I could barely hear Cashier Girl anymore.
       “Mumble mumble bah blah blah y’a bah,” she said.  I was at my wit’s end and still wondering silently whether I’d done something horribly wrong with my victuals. 
       “It’s just that there’s so much noise,” I offered, in desperation.  She did not acknowledge my plight, and there were still no suggestions from my husband. 
       “Blah blah IsehyawhanIshould mumble mumble hehwidyabahgs.”
        “Could you please say that just a little more slowly?” I begged.
       “Bahgs,” Cashier Girl iterated, at last.  “D’you.. wah… mee… ta… ‘elp… ye… wi… yer  bahgs??”
       Well, I hardly felt I could accept assistance at this point, and so I bahged my own groceries and the four of us headed for the door.
       It was at this point that my dear husband, Trevor, who had not said a word throughout the entire exchange, turned to me and asked ever so offhandedly, “Do you know what’s really funny?”  He didn’t wait for my reply but burst out grinning: “When you can’t understand someone who’s speaking the same language.” 

This man has no clear reverence for the Travelator.  We don't know whether or not he mumbles.

 

 

 

This is so much funnier when I upload it as a photo rather than as a video: it plays continuously and gives you a true image of Shawn's Travelator antics that day.

 

[stay tuned for photos of Greenoch and people we could understand.]