Skip to main content

The Twitch

For people that have known me for a while, there are a couple of stories that they are bound to have heard me tell. They're just amusing stories all around, so they're bound to come up eventually. Everyone involved always chuckles or flat out laughs, so in theory, it should be a win-win situation. Should be. As it turns out, though, I know a few jokers that have managed to use these stories to make fun of me.

Let me start with one of these stories: a long time ago, a bunch of us were looking for a place to eat. These were friends I had known for a long time, and we'll all grown up together, so it was a very casual outing. In fact, it was so casual, that we didn't even have a destination in mind. The plan consisted of: "let's find food." So, we were driving around trying to find something to eat, when someone spotted a restaurant that looked promising:

Friend #1: "Hey, what about that spot?"
Friend #2: "Which one?"
Friend #1: "Right there, on the corner. The tah-kweh-ree-ah."
Friend #2: "The what?"
Friend #1: "The one right there!"
Me: "Um, do you mean the taqueria?"
Friend #1: "Oh, is that how you pronounce that?"
Me: *facepalm*

Mind you, this friend had grown up in a culturally diverse city, the same as I had. This wasn't someone with no experience with Mexican culture, or a sheltered person coming out of her bubble. I remember feeling sheer disbelief that this word had never crossed her path before. Still, it was funny, and I've told that story on more than one occasion.

Well, as it turns out, I have several friends now that think it is hilarious to intentionally mis-pronounce that word. In fact, they will do it front of me because that adds to the humor of it all. I mean, I was the one who told them about how to butcher that word, so they want to make sure that I see the results. And much like the first time I heard that word mispronounced, I also cringe a little bit every subsequent time that I heard the wrong pronunciation.

This last fact has not escaped the notice of a few of my joker friends. They pretty much refuse to pronounce "taqueria" properly in front of me, just to watch me react. I've even had a couple of people refer to it as a twitch. One of these folks even confided that it has become such a habit for her to do this, that she can no longer pronounce the word properly. It just comes instinctively to her to butcher the word. Think about that for a second: the gag has become such a constant that the correct, actual pronunciation of the word no longer comes naturally. That's almost as if she had trained herself to believe that two plus two was equal to five. That takes a lot of making fun of me.

Like I said, I know a few jokers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...