Let’s see now. Here are the things I find funny about you:
The fact that you pointed and laughed and elbowed your friend when I was talking on the phone to my auntie, because if I was going to make fun of a person for being foreign, I probably wouldn’t do it while simultaneously admitting the fact that I actually know someone who matches turquoise polos with red checkered hot-pants and has enough rouge on her pimply face to make a fire brigade blush.
The fact that you then proceeded to say, and none too quietly either, “where is she from anyway, Jamaica?” Something that, in turn, illustrated the fact that you probably don’t have a passport and don’t really get out much, despite the fact that you can afford expensive Starbucks coffee and the like. Which, also in turn, made me think of you as a classically brainless drone.
The fact that you thought (out loud) that my skull-patterned headscarf looked “soooo ethnic.”
The fact that your parents probably think that getting drunk on margaritas at The Cheescake Factory is the height of sophistication – and that you will grow up to be exactly like them.
The fact that before you launched into trash-talk, you were making googly-eyes at my boyfriend.
The fact that you’re in high school.
The fact that you will never know the joys of utilizing more than a single brain cell at a time, because that’s what knowing different languages is all about, my dear dumbass.
Natalia A. 
“The fact that your parents probably think that getting drunk on margaritas at The Cheescake Factory is the height of sophistication – and that you will grow up to be exactly like them.”
Ha!
I mean… I like the cheesecake there (I don’t bloody care if it’s corporate), but yeah…
I probably could have said more than that. I remember when I was visiting my graduate school and sat in on a lecture, and the professor mentioned people who think hearing a foreign language being spoken is funny as…well, I don’t remember what, I just remember he cracked wise about them.
By the way, what’s with all the Britishisms? Did you live there for a while? Or did you pick them up somewhere else (footie?)?
Well, if it makes you feel any better, Bridget and I were speaking the English on the metro this weekend and there was a babushka next to us who kept staring at us with alternating looks of intense suspicion and outright revulsion…
The Cheesecake Factory? Don’t you guys have a Texas Cheesecake Depository over there?
Depository? Noooo.
It’s funny you should mention babushkas, Rob. When Khaled and I visited a monastery in Ukraine, and dared to speak English within its walls, there was some serious staring. And evil eye. And lots of muttering.
Jeff, when I first started learning English – I learned Brit-English. And it shows. It especially comes out if I’m tipsy, or agitated, or plain excited – you’ll hear a very weird mixture of Ukrainian & bastardized British accents. Let’s get drunk together and you’ll find out all about it.
Oh, wait, is Depository a joke that I’m not getting? 😦
This laughing at foreign languages thing reminds me of the time when I was a teenager and went to this fast food place run by this Chinese family while being high.
Me and my friend were the only ones sitting in the place and we were eating our food and all of a sudden the person behind the counter answers a phone call and starts out in Chinese and we just couldn’t help ourself laughing.
It was horrible because we constantly broke out laughing as soon as the guy started talking.
We even started inventing things as if we were laughing about something else. 🙂
Hibbert: All right, where would you kids like to eat tonight?
Kid 1: The Spaghetti Laboratory!
Kid 2: Face Stuffers!
Kid 3: Professor P. J. Cornucopia’s Fantastic Foodmagorium and Great American Steakery!
Hibbert: [chuckles] Well, what about this place? [stops the car] “Moe’s”. [Hibbert opens the door]
Barney: Aah! Natural light! Get it off me…get it off me!
Hibbert: Oh, I’m sorry: I thought this was a family restaurant.
Moe: Oh, it is…it is. Just uh, uh, pull them stools up to the pool table.
Kid 2: Daddy, this place smells like tinkle.
Hibbert: Mm hmm. I think we’ll just go to the Texas Cheesecake Depository.
Ha, if I’m in the Durham area, or you’re wherever the hell I end up being for the next little while, definitely. Only maybe not margaritas at The Cheesecake Factory.
Sheesh! Such anger.
Pah. You’re just jelus of my x-treme genius.
Anyway, can It come stay with you for a few days in June? I promise It won’t pee in the corner, or anything.
Of course he can come stay. After all, Stepha told me about this mat that attracts dogs so they only pee on the mat, not on your floor.
We could buy one of those.
^^
😀
I speak Spanish on the phone sometimes, or more rarely Chinese. I get weird looks if I’m in public; apparently us white folks ain’t s’posed ta know nothin but English.
I know how it feels, here they always make fun of people speaking in russian, but the difference is that they always try to show off their limited knowledge of that language by telling you “idi siuda” or “kak dila” . Guess dumb people all over the world are similar.
Last time I witnessed a foreign language being spoken was just before my class started last Friday, and one of my students was speaking in Polish to her mother on her cell phone.
My reaction was, “You’re a much better Polack than I am.” 🙂