Week 10 -- Something New/Different

For a change of pace I've decided to start posting short stories about little episodes of my life here to give everyone a break from longer updates. Here's something that happenned a while ago, but still brings a smile to my face.

Uti (my landlady/Indonesian grandmother) and I get along really well and she is always laughing at something I say or do. Her grasp of English is really good and we talk about all sorts of stuff. The other day she complained that she was forgetting her vocabulary, I was silently amazed she knew a word like vocabulary considering she still asks when I'm going back to America even though I answer that I'm going back to Canada everytime. Anyways back to the story.

It was a lazy afternoon and Uti and I were the only ones home when Mickey's cell phone started ringing. Uti doesn't move around so fast and she wanted me to get the phone and see who it was. But of course the display was in Indonesian and I had no idea what it said. By now Uti and I were both in Mickey's room by the bed looking at the phone. I passed it to her so she could read it, but without her glasses the words were too small for her to read.

She got me to read the caller ID for her, but my pronunciation was so poor she had no idea what I was saying. In fact she found my attempt to read Indonesian so funny she smacked me on the shoulder as she started laughing. But she is so wobbly on her little 68-year-old legs that the force of smacking me sent her flying back on the bed with her legs in the air, laughing the whole time. Now both of us where laughing away at each other. We never did figure out who was calling.

That's it. You may not think it's so funny, but I still laugh when I think about it.