Found in Translation 6: final bitching

English has been influenced too. We, foreigners, still bear the weight of the Latin influence. My wife and I went to the supermarket and asked for two pounds of fish. But it wasn’t that simple. You can weigh it properly if you hear it all.
“Wow, those big shrimps are only 6.99 per pound” my wife says. The label denotes “Sale: 6.99 lb.” So she asks with a smile, “May I have two libras of those shrimps, please?” She says libras with a very nice accent, which reminds of the ancient Romans from Orvieto. “Two what?” the heavily dressed (the dressing was composed of oil, sea salt, and exotic blood on his sleeves) man behind the refrigerators asks. “Two libras, please,” this time the accent is from Eastern Brooklyn-like.

In that moment I put in practice my US college education, and explain to my wife that even though they (yeah, those they) write libras, they mean pounds, which remains from colonial era when weight needed prompt association with money (I made it up of course, but it convinced my sweet heart.)

In the mean while, the arctic man replied with the hazardous, “I don’t understand you, ma’am.”

Besides the cockroaches, my wife doesn’t like to be called ma’am. I notice the fire deep into her ice (those blue eyes are so cold at times.) So I hurried with another explanation: “Listen, it’s OK to be called ma’am. Do you expect to be called differently? And how? Maybe he should have said ‘I don’t understand you, lady?’ No way! You are lucky you didn’t get the ‘I don’t understand you, bitch.’”

So we got our two pounds of shrimp and bought a bottle of whine. It was actually wine that was whining loudly “let me out, let me out, please,” or at least that’s what it seemed to me. With all that good stuff in the bags, we went back home.

Our home happens to be on Beech Avenue. It sounds like a good place, but to me it sounds like beech, beach, or bitch, or at least I pronounce it that way, all the same. When I first heard of the apartment, I thought it was close to a lake, or at least to a river. Not at all. The day we moved in it poured a lot, but there was no river, just two score trees. We scored a good time because of the rain.

Two weeks later I go to the bank to have my account’s address changed. The teller tells me (correct, if she were an asker she would have asked, but she isn’t) “What’s your new address?” With my best mouth twisting effort I say what sounded like “3925 Bitch Avenue.” “Excuse me!”