A good day

I got off work early tonight, which would make most people happy most days. Not me. Not tonight anyway. The reason I am not pleased is that they had us stay late at work all freaking week. I was getting home well after 1 A.M. , now, on Friday the powers that be decided that we need to get off early. Well, it pisses me off. Those assholes stole my overtime pay. Work sucks! Sorry just needed to vent that before my brain exploded. On a lighter note, things are getting friendlier at work. One of the women decided that she would teach me a few Spanish words. She taught me the words for "bag", "rubber gloves", and "tired". I can say them all perfectly apparently, but please do not ask me to spell them. I also reached deep, and managed to piece together two sentences of high school Spanish. Again, I can't spell them but the English translation is "I like working with her. She is very fast." As I weigh slices of roast beef for a living, speed is essential. So, having a fast partner at your table means less work for you. I put these two sentences together haltingly. Everyone laughed. I thought maybe I had screwed up and said something like "The lampshade on my hand is full of horses." That is how bad my Spanish teacher was. He was British for crying out loud! Okay, I will take some of the blame. That is one class I didn't really bother to pay attention in. My Spanish teacher was also my Speech and Debate coach, so I was admittedly the teachers pet. (I write really good speeches.) But, I digress. When they all started laughing I thought I had just made a complete ass of myself. But then they started clapping and talking excitedly to each other. One of them who speaks a smattering of English informed me that I had done very well except that I had used the masculine forms of words, instead of the feminine that I should have used when speaking about a woman. See, what makes Spanish particularly hard to learn for most English speaking people is that words change depending on the sex of the individual you are speaking about and/or the perceived sex of the object about which you are speaking. For example, the word for cold is "frio". But not always. If you are saying "It is cold in here" then the word for cold is frio, because "here" is perceived male. However, if you want to say "The water is cold", then the word for cold becomes "fria" because "water" is perceived female. Are you confused yet? Yeah, me too. That is why I didn't pay much attention in class. But, never the less, they seemed to be pleased that I made the effort. Many of the women also took stabs at speaking to me in English after that, though we often still have to revert to a crude form of sign language. The point is, when I made the effort to communicate with them, they responded in kind. We may never be FRIENDS, but at least I now know that we have a shot at being friendly. And that, in my book makes for a pretty good day.