Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Strumpet spouse or multicultural maven?

My husband is at a convention this week. I miss him horribly. I haven't talked to him in 3 days.

This is what was going through my head when I got kissed at work today.

I know, right?

Remember when I was kind of obsessing over Globotron's Hispanic Freddie Mercury maintenance guy?

Yeah.

I came out of the ladies' room today to find Maintenance Mercury waiting outside. I apologized for taking so dang long to pee. After all, I'm from the Midwest. That's what we do - apologize for everything for no reason.

Turns out Maintenance Mercury doesn't know a lot of English. And I don't know much Spanish. But we attempted a conversation. He apologized for his English and I whipped out some truly poetic Spanish like, "Mi espanol es muy malo." At least I varied somewhat from my super-useful high school lessons of "The library has many books" ("La bibilioteca tiene muchos libros," for those playing along at home).

Maintenance Mercury was obviously excited to practice his English. I had to keep talking to him - he's such an ebullient person. It was only toward the end of our chat attempt that I realized he was complimenting my eyes and my laugh. Then he said something about my husband, shook my hand, and kissed me on the cheek.

My initial thought was, "I can't wait to tell My Guy!"

I guess this means I would be a horrible adulteress. And I'm totally OK with that.

My second thought was, "That was probably inappropriate. Huh."

And then my third thought was, "Mama's still got it! Yay! Even if I have a total double standard, being pissed about being called "girl" at work but thinking it's not terrible to be kissed by a maintenance guy who might have been following the norms of his culture."

Does this make me a harlot? Do I have to turn in my feminist membership card? I say no on both accounts. I think it makes me a friendly adult who just doesn't want to be treated like a child.

Well, a friendly adult who cannot wait to tell her husband, mostly because he will be so disappointed I didn't talk about "todos los libros en la biblioteca."

6 comments:

Gary's third pottery blog said...

HARLOT and STRUMPET! Or is it crumpet? Tart? Tartlet? I remember last year the wife was out of town for the weekend and I went out with my buddies to a rock and roll show and....a young woman asked me to dance! I was, of course, blushing and said no thank you....and turned that sh!t into a blog post OH YES and boasted to the wife later that same evening...gosh, just like you did here.... ;)

Anonymous said...

I think you made that guy's day. Just don't cross the line and ask him where the fish sleeps in his automobile.

Becky Brown said...

?Donde dorme su fez en su coche?

I amaze even myself.

Becky Brown said...

Actually, that would be "pez" not "fez." Oh, hubris.

smalltownme said...

I think on the cheek is OK.

Molly said...

I love this whole post. I'm pretty sure that's all I need to say.