That's "Man" with an "M"

We have been here for two months.  Everybody's Spanish has improved.  I arrived speaking Portuguese, from having lived in Brazil, which has made it relatively painless to pick up Spanish.  With six weeks of Spanish classes under her belt, Natalie is our resident grammar expert.  We turn to her with our questions.  Max polices our pronunciation.  Sometimes he corrects us, but usually we just embarrass him.  He also keeps us up to speed on the slang we need to know.  Helen plays her Spanish cards closest to her chest.  When interacting with Mexicans she usually says little, or says it in English, but then she will blurt something out in perfect Spanish.  At first it was single words, but increasingly there are short sentences.

While the Spanish gets easier every day, that is not to say we do not continue to have our moments of linguistic paralysis.  It is as if there is a switch to fire up the Spanish, which we sometimes forget to turn on. It happens most often to me when I respond to something by reflex.  If I accidentally trip someone on the bus, I might say "sorry" before thinking to say "disculpe."  Or when leaving a place, "bye" often slips out instead of "adios."  The person usually understands what I mean from the context, and it is easy enough to follow up with the correct Spanish term.

But there is another kind of forgetting to turn on the Spanish switch that can have more serious consequences.  It has to do with thinking in the right language.  Sometimes when I am alone and thinking about something in English, I forget to change over to Spanish when necessary.  It happened this morning.  I was on my way to the bathroom in a restaurant.  The first door I saw was marked "M."

Without giving it a second thought, I walked in.  I am a "Man," after all, and I have been one for many years.  What I am not, however, is a "Mujer," which means "woman" in Spanish.  Fortunately, nobody was in the bathroom. I realized my mistake only upon leaving, when I noticed another door with "H" next to it.  "H" is for "Hombre."

It was funny, but it would have been awkward if someone had been in the Women's Room when I walked in. If that had happened, I am pretty sure I know what I would have said:  "Sorry!"  --Harrison