thelie

i suppose it's my own fault for going to McDonald's in the first place, but i had to eat. when we came out, we found my bike had been blocked in by a couple of scooters, one of whose owners was right there, but furiously chattering away on her mobile phone. she finally grasped what i was trying to do and magically, while still holding the phone to her ear, moved her scooter aside to let us out, but that's just when the weirdness began.

instead of her scooter being in the way, she now barred our exit, and dropped the phone to her side and said "excuse me?" we were a little surprised, but became more so when she asked us "what does 'Oh, my God' mean?" for some reason this is a popular phrase here, even with our students, whose teachers are exclusively LDS. i suppose they get it from the dozens of movies they watch each week. anyway, how do you explain a phrase like that? "is it good or bad?" she asked, apparently not sensing that this dichotomy wouldn't make the explanation any easier. "it's kind of both," i said. "it depends on the situation."

needless to say, this evasion was not nearly good enough for our new friend, she had an agenda. as much as we wanted to help her with it, she made it harder when she finally explained why she wanted to know. you see, we had wanted her to feel good about whatever it was in our poor language that was troubling her, so we told her all the things we tell everyone who can put two words of English together: "your English is very good," etc. (it saves them "face"--and actually hers wasn't that bad). but she was undeterred. the truth would come out. she explained that she had told a man that she loved him--over the phone, no less--and he had simply said the fateful words: "Oh, my God." a tough situation. i suppose it would make a difference if the man was a native speaker of English, but not much of one. "well?" she pushed. "is it good or bad?"

you can see our predicament. how do we help her save face and still not alter the fabric of truth? by now she had moved around to the side of the bike (and still had her hand over the mobile's mouthpiece), and the way was cleared for a smooth exit. we took it. "it's good right?" she said confidently. "probably," i said, a lot less so.