My hairstylist seems to understand very little of what I say, presumably due to a language barrier. The last time I was in his chair at the salon, I asked him how many haircuts he does in a typical day, and his answer was “Sabrina.”
During my previous visit, I thought we had made progress. I mentioned having seen the recent He-Man movie, and my stylist expressed familiarity with the 1980s cartoon, which he watched as a child back in Chile.
“Ooh, Chile!” I said with undue enthusiasm.
“Do you know Chile?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted, “but I’ve always wanted to go to Patagonia.”
“Patagonia, yes!” he said with undue enthusiasm.
From this exchange I assumed we were well on our way to becoming best friends. But then at the next appointment we reverted to our usual pattern of me asking awkward questions because I fear silence, and then getting the most baffling answers in return.
I have a friend who might argue that my questions shouldn’t be seriously entertained anyway. In this friend’s view, I tend to zero in on the irrelevant.
Once, for example, he was telling me a story about a volatile couple he knows, and he mentioned that the pair got into a big fight while attending an outdoor screening of Mean Girls. And the first thing I said was, “The original Mean Girls or the musical version?” And I thought the anecdote’s narrator was going to slap me.
Well excuse me for living, but I feel like that detail would be helpful to know. It tells us something about the state of the union under review. After all, any couple so desperate to salvage their failing romance that they’d seize on the musical version of Mean Girls as date night material should just go ahead and call it quits now. They’re clearly doomed.
Still, I get what my friend meant. I do have a certain inclination toward pursuing pointless lines of inquiry. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I’m doing it in this very post. And in every post.
Speaking of which, longtime Indirect Objects readers might recall that I am a low-intermediate speaker of Spanish, a language my Chilean hairstylist almost certainly knows. Nevertheless, I have not yet tried to communicate with him in that tongue. In this regard, I am like a virgin on her wedding night: shy to initiate.
Besides, I find that native Spanish speakers don’t always appreciate being obliged to serve as unpaid language tutors for gringos. I regularly plead with my Puerto Rican spouse to give me 10 minutes of Zacticar—my portmanteau combining my first name with the Spanish verb meaning “to practice”—and it’s like pulling dientes.
And anyway, it’s not like switching to Español would make the conversation (conversación) go smoothly (suavemente) with my hairstylist (homosexual con tijeras). It would just mean that the broken sentences and non sequiturs would come from my side instead of his.
At the end of my last appointment, I made an effort to solicit his recommendation for the best styling product for my hair type. After three attempts garnered only blank stares I finally thought, Oh never mind, I’ll just buy some cummy goop off the internet.
And that is precisely what came to pass.
Indirect Objects 