Some Things Just Don’t Translate

This is the t-shirt my 90-year-old Cuban grandfather was wearing when I took the kids over to visit on Saturday afternoon.

Nobody had noticed what it said until my 9-year-old niece wondered out loud why Abuelo’s shirt read S-E-X in big red letters.

My sister and I were stumped.

“Says what now?”

I walked up behind him in the backyard, camera phone at the ready, while he plucked weeds from his mostly weedy lawn.

“Where’d you get the shirt?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Do you know what it says?”

“Something about sports.”

“Uhm. No.”

“What does it say?”

I translated for him. More than once.

He was a little mortified. He went inside and shredded the shirt with a pair of shears to ensure, I suppose, that he never made the mistake of putting it on again even by accident. He tied the fabric strips together in to one long string he was going to use to tie bundles of yard debris together.

He’s been in this country longer than I’ve been alive and the most English he can manage are the number words he uses to write out his personal checks. In Miami, he doesn’t really need more than that.

Unless he’s wearing a questionable message on his apparel and suddenly needs to decipher t-shirt phraseology.

This shirt looked like a hard worn hand-me-down. The bottom had been cut off along with the collar.

What gets me is that almost every holiday and birthday, I buy shirts and shorts for this dear man, which I’ve never once seen him wear. Instead he’s apparently stealing sex shirts from other people’s clothes lines.

Or someone’s dropping them in to his laundry basket as a gag.

Either way, it’s not the easiest thing to explain to children on a Saturday afternoon.

Or old people for that matter.

Robot Technology and the Disadvantages of Having a Bucket for a Head

 

With only a day’s notice, my husband flung himself wholeheartedly in to the construction of a robot costume which was to serve as my disguise for only a few hours as we led our trick-or-treaters on their hunt for sugar laden goodies.

I was impressed by his enthusiasm.

He penciled diagrams, incorporated details, applied multiple layers of paint. There was cutting and taping and gluing galore.

Yes it’s just a box and a bucket, but the end result was rather imposing, to me at least.

My robot looked prepared to level humanity with one shot of its death ray eyes.

It was even equipped with a gauge that meandered dangerously close to the “catastrophic malfunction” category.

However the disadvantages of having a rectangular torso and a bucket head with limited visual capacity became apparent within my first few moments after leaving the house. Anything not directly in front of my eye holes was in a blind spot, this meant all children, pets, car fenders, plants and the ground I was attempting to walk on were completely invisible to me.

As far as murderous robots went, I was a sad sight with my teenage daughter/ladybug leading me around by the elbow like some shiny octogenarian, warning me when to step down or step up or avoid kicking the random toddler (however much he or she may have deserved it.)

The benefits of being completely ensconced in plastic and cardboard?

Sweatiness notwithstanding, the anonymity was pretty liberating.

I walked around beeping loudly and threatening to destroy things in my bucket amplified robot voice. I frightened very small children who I expect had no real idea what I was boxed up for or why I didn’t have a face.

My sister, who was the “mad scientist” behind the technology (meaning she held a battery-less remote in an attempt to “control” me), walked slightly behind shouting rather obvious orders like “get candy, robot” or “move forward, robot” or “do not destroy the children, robot.” She also cackled maniacally whenever the mood struck her.

It was fun.

We didn’t do Halloween growing up, so I guess we’re making up for it. It was kind of disappointing to see the older trick-or-treaters wearing nothing more than shorts, tee-shirts and a scowl as they held out their pillow cases and demanded their share of loot.

I think next year we’ll reserve the good candy for the kids who put some effort in to their costumes or at least bought one.

Slackers are getting starlight mints or maybe throat lozenges.

Also, to the kid who smeared an orange cupcake all over my mailbox, thanks for sharing. I hope you get acne.

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Spin Cycle, anyone?