Banal Hemorrhage

Generally, people think a bit highly of you when they learn you are bilingual. It's great that they do, but how can I break it to them that I was mostly motivated to be able to play old Sierra and LucasArts computer adventure games? It was of no choice of my own that my mom enrolled me in a bilingual private school. I did nothing to achieve this, so I hope my very public idiocy demystifies bilingualism.  The one good thing about being bilingual is that it gives me a nice excuse when I screw up nouns. Names, places or things have never been my forte, so I constantly use the wrong pronouns, names and directions. I can always blame it on the fact that I have to have 2 copies of everything in my brain, one in Spanish and one in English. Little do they know that I screwed up names in Spanish as well! Swipe opened a very new way of being wrong, something I was not looking for.

Being bilingual is not always all fun and games. Some of the problems I've had because of being bilingual are: Hearing people talk about me when they think I can't understand. Being confused by two sets of grammar rules that make no sense. Being the de-facto guide if travelling to a country that speaks a language I know. Becoming the target of racism. Yep. Racism. The only instances of racism that I have experienced in the United States are when someone detects my accent or hears me talking to someone in Spanish. In a very memorable one, a man with a red hat (pre Trump, there must be something about red) asked what the hell I was doing in his country. I answered "To take your jobs and bang your women". Some friends I was with defended me from what would have been the pounding of my drunken life. The few cases where I've experienced this made me realize how bad some minorities have it. I've felt belittled and hated by another human due to my birt...

Did you know dogs bark in different languages? Well they don't, but  for some reason we do  onomatopeya them completely different! Inspired by a curious Czech girl.

Nothing should be in somebody's lap! And yet, both are acceptable uses.

You are considered to be "in the bed" when you have a flimsy fabric on? Nay, I say. Go all the way, be inside the bed. Otherwise you're on the bed.

If you are a native English speaker, this may not weird you as it does English-as-a-second-language folks. We don’t make the distinction between in-on in Spanish, we can use other prepositions (inside/ atop) to guide us. Things get funny with English, specially when dealing with abstract concepts. How can I always be "on time", but "in time I will learn something"? What dictates these functions? It’s madness I say! More tomorrow.

Still trips me up sometimes.