Three Grapes, a Free Cat, and Getting Lost in Translation

Language is beautiful. No matter who you are, you speak a language. It’s how you communicate, or in my case, don’t communicate. It’s how you express your individuality and ideas to the rest of the world. Language is unique, and sometimes too much so. This weekend I was once again made aware of the various cultures throughout our world. And of their differences to ours.

It all started with a haircut. A simple process really. But one I apparently cannot do without creating confusion. What I had thought was going to be a routine trip to my cousins in Kokomo for a routine haircut, quickly turned into chaos. When I arrived at the barbershop I found out that my cousin had decided to take off early and go home. Ok, no problem, I’ll just go talk to her there. Not so. When I got to her house I discovered that the reason she had left early was because she was going to a family reunion in Tennessee. Great for her. For me…not so great. So being the quick thinker that I am, I decide to call my other cousin (named TJ). After explaining my situation to him he decides that it is best that we go to a Steak house in Indianapolis for dinner. Why not? I mean gas is only like $20 an ounce nowadays. So off I go.

I realize on my drive that I have time to kill. Just as that thought leaves my neurons, off for thought heaven, I see a billboard for a Flea Market. On the billboard they are advertising free grapes. For some reason, this sounded outstanding to me. I mean, come on…free grapes. Who doesn’t like grapes? Especially when they are free. So I take my exit and head over to what looked like a small city, known as the Daleville Flea Market. This thing is a monstrosity. How I was going to find my way out of it was a hard enough question to answer, let alone finding the grapes. When I say small city, I don’t exaggerate. There were mountains of random knick-knacks laying around. And lots of old and sometimes priceless treasures. Priceless as in they should be price-less. In other words, free. After about a half an hour of hacking through the hundreds of salivating salesmen (I think they can smell fear), I finally found the grapes. Or more I found the grocery section. And it is full of food. Lots of food. Lots of fruit. Oddly lots of “fresh” ocean fish (Remember we are in Indiana). When I found the grapes I discovered something that made my heart sink. A frightfully dramatic looking Chinese lady who seemed to be in a rather nasty stage of rigor mortis, was watching them. “Hey!” the corpse coughs at me. “You wan free grapes!?” I must have been giving off the fear scent again because she pounced at me with surprising agility for a decaying person. “Here you take!” She then thrusts a bag of three grapes into my open hand. “Thanks.” I manage to respond. Then out of nowhere, my brain comes up with a thought. Maybe I can get some fresh pineapple for free to. So I regain the carcass’s attention and ask her if the pineapple is free. Suddenly a look of terror filled her eyes. “You…wan my cat?” she asks. At this point I had no idea what to say, so I respond with the most readily obvious answer. “Sure.” She then goes into the back and retrieves a cat, that no kidding makes the Chinese lady look like a nice laid back person of 30. This cat has about three patches of hair on its body. And those patches are wiry and graying. This cat was probably older than most of the junk I had previously seen for sale at the flea market. With tears in her eyes, the Corpse hands me this creature. But before the transaction can be completed, I quickly correct her, that I only wanted the pineapple. She was so happy that I didn’t take her cat, that I got the pineapple for free. This is the first time the art of language truly hit me as important this weekend. With a simple mistranslation, I had almost taken a dying cat from a zombie-like Chinese lady. It could have killed her.

After leaving the Chinese lady and her cat to happily rot together, I got back on the road. I decided that I had had enough adventures for the day and went straight to the steakhouse. I arrived about a half hour early, so I was forced to sit alone and wait for my cousin. You never really know the feeling of insecurity until you are sitting by yourself in a Ball State t-shirt in a steakhouse in Indianapolis. But it is at the worst times that the best things happen. At that steakhouse, at that time, I happened to arrive at the end of the shift of one, Mary Yostanovichka. She was a Russian foreign exchange student, and she decided to spend her free time hanging out with me until my cousin showed up (forty five minutes late I might add). We had a good long conversation about many things that were way beyond at least my maturity level. And in all this time, the things I remember the most are the smile, the laugh, and expressions on her face. The words didn’t matter as much as the meaning did. Language can only take you so far, but that is when the universal language of human emotion, takes over. When the Chinese corpse wept for its dying cat, when Mary smiled, that was the real communication. The rest just gets lost in translation.

-Jacob