So now that the shame of this little episode has subsided I can tell the story without that “wow, that was really moronic” feeling, cause honestly it’s kinda funny. You know, if it’s not you.
As I’ve mentioned before, Amy and I are taking language lessons and we’re beginning to feel a little more confident in using more complex phrases when we go out. This, however, is a double-edged sword. The phrases we do know can sometimes give the impression that we understand more than we really do when they talk to us, which means when something goes wrong it can spin out of control fast and lead to a point you just want to say “sure” because you don’t want to continue looking like a simpleton (I am willing to admit it might just be me…).
Anyway, Amy and I were hungry one evening but didn’t feel like cooking or going out to eat. With delivery pizza (ok, delivery in general…as, you know, a concept) not an option you have to go order it in person and get it for “take away”. In this particular case Amy didn’t feel like going anywhere so my over-confidence and me got in the car and headed to a pizza place we like. Honestly, I’ve done this before, and they kind of know us there but we’ve done a lot of ordering in caveman/charades because it’s simpler. Not tonight. No, tonight I’m going to try and do this in complete sentences and look like I belong here. To which any sane person would have said, “Ha…good luck with that.” Put gently this was a noble but ultimately doomed exercise. Put that into Google translate though and I think it shortens it to “FAIL”. Why, you ask? Because any slip up in communication is one I’m going to have to eat…literally. The headline writes itself, “Pride meets idiot, ends in fall”.
I should point out that Pizza here is different. There’s a lot less sauce and as a matter of course they put things on pizza that we traditionally don’t use (and if you ask for pepperoni they get really confused. It’s not a bad word but it doesn’t mean what we think it means here – hat tip: Inigo Montoya). So when you pick out a pizza, you probably want to make sure you know what’s on it. Amy wanted a local one called the Grottagliese, and I picked out a different one (at this point I really don’t even remember which one, but it may or may not have had french fries on it). In any case I walked up to the counter and said what I had rehearsed the whole way over, and technically, I said it right. YAY! Success! Except, I said one of the pizza’s wrong…Amy’s. Now, had it been mine, not so big a deal. A Diavola (essentially a pepperoni pizza) is fine by me, but that’s not what she asked for. Now I have to fix it. Crap. I didn’t rehearse that part. And there are people waiting behind me. And now my mind is blank and the only words I can think of are Russian. I tried to fix it, I really did. And for about five whole minutes I thought I had done it (completely hoping against hope that the smaller price on the receipt was because I was such a nice guy). Then they got my attention and handed me a single pizza box. Uh…uh-oh.
You see the problem I had in trying to fix it in a hurry is I couldn’t seem to get across to her that I wanted to start the whole order over. Or, well, I should say that I didn’t seem to get that across to her. I thought that I had. I even had an Italian guy there that spoke a little English help me try and sort it out, but apparently that didn’t work either. We went round and round a couple of times until what she told me sounded right…cause I’m and expert and all. Ultimately what I wound up ordering and what they wound up doing was merging the two pizzas together (somehow without the french fries). Looking back the slightly concerned look on her face makes a lot more sense now. Sure, goofy American dude, we can put all those toppings on one Pizza…ya weirdo. I suppose it could have been worse, the toppings were separable and in the end it was edible. Bonus, it even came with a free slice of humble pie.
