My dad called me yesterday morning to chat quickly about a website Adam and I are doing for his restaurant and instead of the usual goodbyes, he leaves me with a joke. It was told in Spanish, so I’ll do my best to translate the hilarity.

Johnny was playing with his train set in the living room while his mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen. All of a sudden, his mother hears “Ok, assholes, this is your conductor speaking. If this is your destination, get the fuck off the train and take all your shit with you. If you are boarding at this station, hurry the fuck up and get your shit stowed away so we can get the fuck out of here already.” She rushes into the living room and scolds Johnny for his horrible language. “Go to your room for two hours and think about what you’ve done.”

Johnny begrudgingly marches off to his room and at the end of his two-hour sentence, he returns to the living room and his train set. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your conductor speaking. If this is your destination, please gather your belongings and proceed to the nearest exit. If you are boarding at this station, I would like to welcome you aboard and ask that you find your seats and stow your luggage quickly so that we may depart in a timely fashion.”

“Oh, and for those of you who are wondering why we are now two hours off schedule, you can thank that dirty bitch in the kitchen.”

Gringos, listen up because I’m only going to say this once: It’s cojones, not cajones. Cajones means “drawers” (as in desk drawers, not underwear); cojones means “balls.”

My office phone rings, and the caller ID informs me it’s the receptionist. I’m not expecting any calls from any of my work-from-home colleagues, so she’s not transferring a call. This is not good.

“Marcela, can you talk to the lady on line 1? She’s calling about ____ and she doesn’t speak English; only Spanish.”

My stomach tenses and my palms get so sweaty I’m struggling to not drop the handset. Mostly, I’m nervous about having to speak Spanish; but I think the physiological reactions are caused by the fact that I have to talk about something I know close to nothing about.  She’s calling about an online course my company developed that predates my hire by at least a year or two. The course satisfies a bi-annual continuing education training requirement for Florida independent auto dealers as mandated by the DMV. If you understood that last sentence, you’re already one step ahead of where I was when I took a deep breath and picked up on line 1.

The second she heard me answer in Spanish, the caller launched into this story that was so incredible that I immediately started taking notes.  She was speaking very quickly, but I was able to catch the following:

• She’s a diabetic
• Last week, she ate a few things that she shouldn’t have
• She remembers driving her car, but everything after that was fuzzy until…
• She woke up in the hospital with partial amnesia

I could not believe this was happening. The woman was on the verge of tears and I wanted very badly to help her—language barrier be damned—but I had no idea what she needed from me or my company.

I waited until she stopped talking about diabetes and ambulances and asked her, specifically, what issues she was having with the website. She said something about needing to pay for the course in person (and I’m assuming in cash) because the only credit card she has is with her husband who is away on business in Tampa. I explained to her that she could just get the credit card information from her husband over the phone and type it into the website. This seemed to calm her down only slightly.

The real issue was this: their current certification was going to expire that day. She needed to get her hands on a new certificate and get it to the DMV by close of business. Finally, I understood what was going on and why she’d told me about her diabetic fit: with all the commotion of black-outs and hospital stays, she’d forgotten to get her certificate renewed and she was now on the verge of getting fined, or worse (she was sure that she was going to have to close down her dealership).

What she really wanted from me was to just hand over a new certificate. I explained to her that the only thing she could do was take the course and print out the certificate. Unfortunately, the course takes about 8 hours to complete and it was already 1:20 in the afternoon.  I sympathized with her that the DMV would be closed by then, but that she should call them and tell them that she will be able to turn in a time-stamped certificate the very next morning. She thanked me for my help and I wished her the best of luck. Shakily, I hung up the telephone and cursed the day I decided to put “bilingual” on my resume.

Yesterday, my office manager came back to my desk and asked me if I could help her out with something. I was pretty confused since I have no idea what she does on a daily basis, let alone how I (as a programmer) could help her in said duties.

“Do you remember ____ from our Puerto Rico office?”
“Yeah, I met her at the holiday party.”
“Well, her mother died yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to call up a Puerto Rican florist so we can send flowers, but nobody speaks English!”
“Oh…”
“Can you call one of these florists?”

She hands me a list of three florists, the address for the funeral parlor where the service is being held, and her corporate AmEx. If it weren’t 58 degrees in this office, I would’ve broken out into a sweat - nothing stresses me out more than having to speak Spanish.

For one thing, I’m out of practice; I mostly use it when I see my aunts and uncles on holidays.  It came much easier in high school when I was dating an ESOL student from Venezuela and working at my dad’s restaurant where the entire kitchen staff was from El Salvador. On top of that, while my English slang is about ten years behind the times, my Spanish slang is nonexistent; so even though I don’t have an American accent giving me away, my speech sounds ultra-proper and tense.

Nonetheless, I’m listed as bilingual on my resume; so I took the list of florists back to my desk and fired up Babelfish, because honestly I had no idea how to say “white lilies” in Spanish.