Dick Wolfsie
The Wolfsies recently returned from a wonderful vacation in Mexico where we visited with Mary Ellen’s brother Tom and his new bride, Cori. In preparation for the trip, I have been learning Spanish with an app called Duo Lingo. When airline safety instructions were given in Spanish, Mary Ellen asked me to translate. The only thing I am sure the flight attendant said was “Thanks for flying American…” because that part was in English. Here are a few other funny things that happened on our journey…
During the flight, there was a mother and baby in the seat across the aisle. The baby never stopped screaming. When the flight landed, the mom apologized and said air travel made the baby’s ears hurt. “Yes,” I said, “that is exactly how I felt during the last two hours.”
My wife was not without a few embarrassing moments. At the Indianapolis Airport, most passengers must take off their shoes before going through security. I am exempt from this requirement because I am over 75 years old. The restriction is lifted for super-seniors because if I did have something dangerous stashed in my shoe, it would take me about 20 minutes just to bend over in my seat and extricate the contraband from my sneakers.
After we had all passed through airport security, we began to gather our belongings from the rubber trays provided for items like cell phones, belts and wallets so they can move through the X-ray machine. I looked back to the beginning of the line and someone had taken off their shoes but neglected to place them on the conveyor belt. They had been left on the airport floor. Somewhere, someone was walking around barefoot. By the way, my wife has lovely feet and now everyone about to head for gate 32A knew it.
In Mexico one evening, Mary Ellen commented to her brother how beautiful the songbird sounded warbling in the nearby park. But it was the burglar alarm of Tom’s car that had accidentally been set off when he exited his vehicle. ( Note: Mary Ellen never does goofy stuff like this, but this did make the vacation so much more fun for me.)
I was very good at asking questions in Spanish, but terrible at understanding the answers. Where is the bathroom? ( Donde esta el banyo?) seemed easy enough. But after simple inquiries, I’d often get lengthy responses that I didn’t understand. When I asked the question: “Do you serve beer?” I was hoping for a simple response like “Si, Senior,” but I think what I got was a dissertation on Mexican breweries, none of which I understood, although I did catch the words Corona every once in a while.
The streets in Puebla were very rocky and Mary Elen told me that if I wasn’t careful, I’d eventually trip and hurt myself. She was right. After stumbling for the seventh time, I took a nasty fall on the uneven street. I glared at my wife. “Why are you upset with me?” she asked. “I told you that if you didn’t walk carefully, you were going to eventually trip and fall.”
“Yes, but you didn’t tell me which time.”
On the final night, we all went out to dinner with Cori’s immediate family. Her mother leaned over and offered a few thoughts in Spanish. I did the same in English. I have no idea what she said and she had no idea what I said, but I’m pretty sure we were both sharing how happy we were to all be together.
Television personality Dick Wolfsie writes columns for The Daily Reporter. Send comments to [email protected].
