Lent 18

Further thoughts on communication... I thought about this while thumbing through one of my favorite books of funny short stories. Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch was written by Hollis Gillespie, who I met at a book festival a couple of years ago and laughed out loud for the whole hour she spoke. Here's a sample from "Hellish Gargoyle":

You think I'd be better at the whole communication thing, considering I'm an official foreign-language interpreter. Fortunately for me I represent people who have no idea I'm using a very broad interpretation of the word "interpreter" to describe my services. As far as they know, I'm translating their words with sparkling precision, but luckily Germans are pretty tolerant of non-natives who attempt their language, so the interactions usually go off smoothly. Once, an American doctor directed me to ask a German patient when she had had her last bowel movement and asked her, essentially, "Madame, when was the last time you went to the toilet solidly?"

She answered my questions and laughed. My clients must think I am very clever, as I am always making people laugh in thier native languages. It is apparently even funnier because I have perfect pronunciation, and i can turn to a German pharmacist and say without a hint of an accent, "It would please me greatly to purchase medicine for my fluid nostrils," or to a Spanish tax driver while searing for the metal end of the over-the-shoulder safety strap, and tell him, "Pardon me, but I am missing the penis of my seatbelt," or to an Austrian hotel clerk regarding a beautiful fountain nearby, "Is it possible to acquire a room with a view of the urinating castle?"

It must be hilarious to hear those massacred phrases spoken with the determined clarity of a cowbell...

So, what's the point? For one thing, that's a funny story. But for another, I think about how often lines of communication get so crossed with people, in the hospital, in the church, in life. For humans to rely so heavily on the spoken word, we are pretty bad at it, pretty often. I spend a lot of time with patients who are not communicating on the same level as me, but somehow we end up on the same page. It matters less the words you use that what you mean, sometimes. It's like the man I talked about yesterday. He thought we were going to hook up jumper cables to his hospital bed and we were going to ride around town. Those words made absolutely no sense if they are only words, but he was pretty effectively communicating to me that he was trapped in his hospital room, or in the nursing home he'd been in, or perhaps even his mind, and he was ready to go out for a joyride. I pray that I may slow down long enough, be patient enough, to get past the poor translations and get to the meaning of the thing. And I pray that those around me would offer me grace with my terrible translations too.