A Common Language

I don’t agree that familiarity breeds contempt. For me, familiarity leads to taking things for granted. When such familiarity has been jolted in the past, it has caused me some short-term awkwardness, but in the long term, it enabled me to grow as an individual. I certainly felt this when I moved from England to Vancouver, just over four years ago. Certain words and phrases didn’t mean quite the same as they did in England and on three occasions this difference took me out of my comfort zone.

The first instance that springs to mind was when my wife Tania and I stayed at a bed & breakfast near Kamloops in the interior of British Columbia. After checking us in, the lady owner looked at me and said:

“Would the gentleman like a comforter for the night?”.  I looked at her for roughly five seconds, opening and closing my mouth like a goldfish before blurting out, “No, not tonight, but thanks for asking.” I started giggling and had to turn away from the reception desk.

“Why were you laughing?” said Tania, when we were in our room, “What’s wrong with you?”.

“She asked me if I wanted a comforter. A comforter! I’m forty-one”.

“It’s a quilt.” said Tania, “A bed quilt”.

In England, a comforter is a dummy teat, used to pacify children. That night, I had strange dreams in which a woman tried to insert a quilt-sized dummy teat into my mouth.

A few days later, I was using a payphone to contact a government department. The disembodied voice at the other end of the line said:

“…. And press the pound key for further options”.

I stared at the keypad for around twenty seconds, checking and rechecking. There was no pound key! Not the pound I knew, the British currency sign.

I said to myself “What do I do? There’s no pound key. I don’t believe this”.

I turned around and repeated this to a passerby.

“There’s the pound key” he said, pointing at the keypad.

“Which one?” I replied.

“This one.” he said, pointing at the key with a ‘#’on it, “This one”.

I thanked him and pressed the “pound” key. The line had gone dead.

Two weeks later, approaching a mall, I saw a sign on the entrance saying “Warning -Automatic Door”. About one foot from the door I realized it wasn’t going to open, so I stopped and walked backwards about six paces. In England, most automatic doors operate by pressure pads, so I tried my best to find the pressure pad for the ‘automatic’ door. I must have looked like a cross between a traditional Irish dancer and a man deliberately trying to detonate a landmine in a minefield. Of course, I failed to find the pressure pad and after a few seconds, a woman walked past me and grabbed the door handle.

“Handle” she said slowly, looking at me pityingly, “Handle”.

“Handle” I said, blushing profusely, “Yes. The door handle. To open the automatic door”. I repeated the phrase “The automatic door has a handle” to myself for around a minute, as though it was a new mantra I had to learn. By the time I’d finished my chanting, I could just about raise a smile and see the funny side of what had happened.

            Differences in the understanding of a single word can also cause offence, albeit unintentionally. Such an event occurred in 1989 when I was in Seville, talking to a North American woman about Holland and I happened to mention that:

            “In the Friesian Islands and other parts of Holland, the Dutch leap over dykes”.

She looked at me open-mouthed. “What?”.

I laughed and continued “I know, who’d have believed it? Dyke-leaping! They only leap across the smaller dykes though, not the larger ones, they’re just too wide!” I spread my arms like an exaggerating fisherman.

She was really upset, “That’s incredibly sexist, how can you find that amusing? Why do those Holland women allow that to happen? It’s disgusting” and with that she stormed off.  It was only then that I realized why the woman was angry, but it was too late, she’d gone. I reasoned I could have offended her even more, by saying that in order to make their leap, the Dutch stick a pole into the bottom of the dyke.

In this instance, a misunderstanding over one word made me feel

embarrassed, but it did teach me to choose my words more carefully, to suit

my audience. Anyway I must go; I’m feeling tired and I’m looking forward to

having a good night’s sleep, as tonight I have a brand new comforter to keep

me warm.