Read Your Lips
/I am scared of the telephone. No joke. The landline rings in my flat and I make myself busy. I start doing the dishes. There is no way to pick up the phone when your hands are all soapy. The phone is the devil to a person learning another language. If I pick up a ringing phone there will be some fast talking Spaniard on the other end – and they are just as difficult to interrupt as they are to understand. Once I do manage to slip in and ask them to speak more slowly, they just start the entire conversation over again at the same speed… because, let’s be realistic here, I am picking up a ringing phone in Spain. Where they speak Spanish.
Watching dubbed television is equally ridiculous. When the mouths form shapes that do not match the sounds coming from the TV, it’s impossible to follow. But so much is dubbed here in Spain that I should get over it -- just like my fear of the telephone. Spain is going to keep on dubbing American TV shows and the phone is going to keep on ringing.
Sometimes I bump into my Madrileña roommate in the hallway and we will have a conversation while I am not wearing contacts or glasses. I can’t see her lips moving, so I must concentrate. I unconsciously move closer and closer to her in an effort to see her face. Now, Americans find this lack of space between two people horrifying, but the Spanish would probably prefer to converse when I can’t see, because it means I am an appropriate two inches away from them.
Getting out of one's comfort zone is always a good thing and clearly my zone exists as far away from the telephone as possible. But today I got over one of those ridiculous hurdles and actually, willingly (well, okay not entirely willingly) picked up the phone to make a call in Spanish. Ironically, for an eye doctor’s appointment.
We’ll see if it was a success when I go to the given destination at 9pm next Tuesday.
Wait…9pm doesn’t seem like an appropriate time for an eye doctor’s appointment, does it?