cross-thought, cross-posted

i just posted about spanish tins of food on my all-food, all-the-time blog, and after hitting "publish" i started giggling, remembering the trail of humorous stories around the topic of the post, "bacalao," or in english, "cod."

our friend david, whose impressive ability to translate between our imperfect, slang-infested english and his expressive, melodic native spanish was a skill we relied upon for 7 days of pure magic. every so often david would misprounounce a word in english or we would slaughter a spanish term, but the main concepts were never lost to our intermittent malapropisms.

except once when we had to intervene.

the major theme of our spanish holiday was food, and as david is a lover of food, he was often narrating history through regional fare and preparation. early in our trip, i asked him for help, pointing at a dish on the menu highlighting "bacalao." he translated it as "cock." not to be deterred--i'm a pretty adventurous eater--i said, "oh, okay," and he continued, with hands eagerly slicing the air, "it's prepared 3 different ways." noting my enthusiasm and attention to his description, he said, "you want the cock?"

i nodded, wondering what i was in for.

turns out, a lovely dish with 3 preparations of cod was placed before me. it was delicious and not at all what i was expecting. at some point, david turned to me and asked, "do you like the cock?" i nodded, struggling to decide right then and there if i should correct him. i didn't.

i figured this episode was just a blip in our travels through translations, until i heard him correcting his girlfriend, maria, one day after she said, "cod?" and he said, "no, coCK."

that night, i shared my observations with david, who agreed we should correct our friend, lest he find himself in another "do you like the cock?" situation with less accomodating people.

it was david s. who was the one faced with an appropriate interlude in which to broach the topic. spanish david's reaction was one of laughter mixed with amazement mixed with good nature--we all shared a hearty giggle over his mistake, and even now, i laugh out loud when i remember him saying, "you like the cock?"