Friday, March 10, 2006

Annie-isms

My wife Annie is one of the smartest, funniest, most caring people I've ever known. She founded what would eventually become a multi-million-dollar business, helped authors achieve international fame, and keeps our place running like clockwork.

She has never, however, met a phrase she couldn't mangle. Mrs. Malaprop's got nothin' on Annie. Instead of "Six of one, half-dozen of another" we get "Six of one, twelve dozen of another." So I thought every now and then I'd share a little bit of "Annie's Words of Wisdom" with you.

Our neighbors had gone out of town for a week or two, and their Spanish-speaking maid was taking care of their horses and house. Because Annie lived in Spain for a while and speaks Spanish well, we're the ones she calls if anything goes awry. So one evening she called and told Annie that one of the horses might be hurt, could we come over to take a look?

We hopped in the truck and discovered one of their most gorgeous and expensive horses, a black Friesian, had gotten her legs caught up in the stall gate at feeding time and scraped herself up pretty good.

In discussing what had happened, Annie tried to say in Spansish that she loved the black horse. But what she actually said was:

"I love the black cowboys."

The maid's look was, frankly, astonished. I'm not sure if she thought Annie wanted her to go round up some hot black cowboy stud in payment of her pseudo-vet services or what, but our visit concluded very quickly after that.

The poor thing still hasn't called us back in the weeks since. I can only imagine what she thinks of us and our crazy Americano hedonistic ways.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

and she's got a few of her own that I've learned in the short time we've known each other & I've made good use of them

Anonymous said...

I LAUGHED SO HARD I CRIED Reading this. It sounds like something that would be in a movie. Carly thought I lost my mind. Annie we love you so much!!!

Anonymous said...

So I sat in on a Spanish class at work today because our company has started working for a lot of Spanish speaking clients & has hired an instructor to teach lunch & learn sessions twice a week. This class has been going on for months and a new one starts next week so I wanted to see which might be more suitable for me since I studied Spanish for a lot of years in school...but that was a lot of years ago.

We were watching an Argentine television drama on video which the instructor stopped at different times to explain or review phrases & words.

For some reason, someone asked how to say "horse". I knew so replied "caballo" and when they asked about "cowboy", I said "caballero" then started laughing out loud. Amidst the stares I said I'd explain later.

The instructor went on to correct me by saying that "vaquero (or gaucho)" was "cowboy" and that "caballero" meant "gentleman" so that just goes to show what a classy gal Annie really is!

Jeff Hebert said...

Glad to know at least she loves cowboys with class, thanks for passing that along!