Stranger, Danger

Today I had to go to a nearby small town to get my car fixed. It’s the kind of Midwestern town that has been built around an interstate intersecting with a local highway, one that has gradually spread its tentacles of truck stops, fast-food joints, half-deserted malls, gas stations, and car dealerships ever wider, but that is basically still rural, hillbilly, local, Appalachian here in Southern Illinois. A town nestled so deeply inside the United States that you could drive for an entire day and never reach another country.

I had about a two-hour wait, so I took my students’ final exams to grade. Seeing the papers spread over the table in front of me, the couple in the seats along the wall behind me asked what I did. I told them I teach English to foreigners. The man’s immediate response was: “I wish you’d teach all of them. Cain’t even speak the language – what’re they doin’ here?” Okay. To avoid going there, I told him I teach students who come from abroad to earn university degrees here. His next response was: “Who pays for them to study? I hope not our government!” I assured him their governments usually paid and he was relieved. An aging, tattooed hippie across the room joined the conversation, adding how it was criminal that not everyone in America could speak English and how we let just anyone in when it’s our country, clearly referring to migrant workers.

The first man asked me where my students were from, and I told him Latin America, Asia, and mainly the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan (which doesn’t really count as the Middle East, although I suspect they wouldn’t have made that distinction). Mr. Tattoo squinted his eyes and peered thoughtfully into the distance. “You know, how do you really know what they’re thinkin’ and what they’re up to? They act nice but who knows what they’re plottin’ behind our backs?”

I guess I understand that: the unknown is frightening, and if the only images and words the average uninquisitive American ever receives from the mainstream media are evil terrorists insidiously infiltrating the West and creepy, bearded medieval-looking characters who seem to live in caves, that would be a reasonable conclusion. It would be the same as my students in Spain who were convinced that all Americans carry guns and are just a step away from gunning down the entire school, mall, etc., that we live in mortal fear of being shot down every time we leave our homes. After all, what other news do they get of this country but the dramatic bloodbaths wrought by raving fanatics? And what other images do we get of Saudi Arabia (bearded men in gowns), Iraq (the evil Saddam) and Afghanistan (those half-animal cave dwellers)? We always get the striking, electrifying images, the scary ones, the shocking events which seem to be the only fodder for what we call the news and that only fan the flames of misunderstanding and hatred. We never get pictures or stories of everyday, decent people just trying to get through life with some modicum of comfort and happiness, regardless of their country. In other words, we never see what we share with them; we only see what sets them apart from us, what makes them alien, unknown, and thus frightening and threatening.

“Well,” I told him, “my students are great because once you talk to them you realize they’re just like us. Almost every single Muslim student has told me how saddened they were by 9/11, and the Saudis told me how their country was also targeted by Osama Bin-Laden and his folks,” something we never hear in the U.S., the great and only victim.

I went on: “You know, the Muslim women with their faces all covered up are kind of scary and intimidating to us, but as a woman once I get to know them and they take off their headscarves and coverings, they’re as modern as I am, and smart and funny. They just keep it private. And all my students walk around in jeans and carry cell phones. They dance and laugh and will talk your head off. And they work really hard. All they want is a better life, which is all any of us wants, really.”

The other couple had left, but Mr. Tattoo was engaged now. He was softening. “You know, you got something. In my company [the oil pipeline business, it turns out], the only ones who work hard are the Mexicans. The Americans are just lazy and good-for-nothing, so it’s not surprising we’re losing jobs to foreigners.” He went on to tell me about the youthful slothfulness of his own son, which he fortunately remedied through hard lessons. “They’re good guys,” he concluded about his immigrant workers, “I just wish they spoke English.”

“Well, maybe the company can offer them some English classes,” I suggested, not so much as a distinct possibility but as a way of saying that meeting them halfway might work. “Yeah, I’ve even thought about taking a Spanish class,” he said, imagining himself taking a step to bridge that gap. Wow! Where had that bigot gone? Our conversation had gone from trite, pseudo-patriotic “hate them foreigners” to real discussion and consideration of solutions, and of these people as humans worth interacting with instead of scary monsters threatening our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

People are funny. It’s as if my American-ness led him and the other couple to believe that I would naturally be equally outraged at what they perceive as the takeover of America by non-Americans and equally suspicious of foreigners, the expected attitude, at least around here. What they couldn’t have imagined is that I actually feel so much more joined with my students than with them: we share a larger worldview, a sense of the greater world as tangible and important as opposed to distant and abstract; a realization that differences come more from open or closed mindsets than from geographical origins (which are, after all, accidental); a sense that someone different from me is fascinating, not threatening. Yet once these possibilities were brought into the conversation, Mr. Tattoo became reflective and willing to listen; he even defended those “dang furners” who are purportedly taking over our country.

It makes me think that a more educated discourse in the media and among individuals would surely bring this world closer together and build bridges, sow the seeds of understanding and harmony instead of suspicion and hatred, even among people who are arguably as adamantly pro-American and ignorant of the outside world as is possible here in America’s heartland, days from any other country. It makes me think that this would make the world so much smaller and knowable, it would shine light on what unites us instead of what divides us, and it would be so much more productive than the current discourse of hatred, mudslinging and stereotypes, which people who don’t know any better just swallow, their all-American mother’s milk that nursed them into patriotic being.

In Praise of Play

My daughter Cecilia and I moved from Spain to the United States two years ago, originally just for a year, but now it looks like that year is being extended indefinitely. Until I can gather the funds for a “real” home, we’re living in a little rental duplex: not exactly where I want to be at this age, but I do know it’s temporary. Back in Spain, I was used to being surrounded by Ceci’s friends; she would always invite them over to play (no, not “play dates”, perish the expression!!!), have lunch, or spend the night. I love those friends and the easy banter we had – after all, we’d known each other their whole lives. They were my surrogate children, and I still love them dearly.

They would take over one entire floor of our house with their elaborate set-ups and scenarios: a combination of all the different toys Cecilia has ever had in her life , most of them animals and homes for the animals, but also shoe boxes converted into stables, farms, zoos, and homes, toilet paper rolls with green construction paper on top for miniature trees, fences made of popsicle sticks, and other childish yet clever accoutrements she and her friends spent hours carefully crafting. When they tired of that game, out would come the costumes, a mixture of hand-me-down tutus, old Carnaval and Halloween costumes (running the gamut from her giraffe costume from when she was three years old to her more recent “Gothic witch girl” costume), scarves, boas and anything else that could be tied, draped or tucked into a fantastical getup. Or perhaps they would haul out the paint, brushes, paper, pencils and other art gear and proudly produce their handiwork an hour later. They would spend hours and hours playing upstairs, and even last summer, when we were in Barcelona for a visit, although they were now 11 years old, they still played, fought, made up (fer les paus), invented, created, and giggled for hours on end.

A few months ago I asked Cecilia why she never invited her friends over to our home in the U.S. I imagined it was because she had just met them at her new school and wasn’t familiar enough with them yet, or maybe because she was a little embarrassed by our tiny quarters. Her answer flabbergasted me: “I don’t want them to see my horses.” Now, Cecilia is a collector, no, make that hoarder, of any plastic horse or conceivable horse-related accessory on Earth. She has dozens and dozens of them, plus at least ten stables –  from the lovely wooden one her father gave her last year to an old box that she carefully cut out and glued with dividers to make stalls, shelves, and tack hangers. Of course they’re all fitted out with her store-bought and handmade bales of hay, apples, carrots, tack, saddle pads, hoof ointment, bridles, halters, and anything else a barn has. I realized that Cecilia had just revealed the change I’d noticed in her since she’d started in her new school, a change I had attributed more to her age than the school, although it no doubt has to do with both. At her school, girls her age are into makeup, mall clothes (the same five brands, all overpriced and identical except for the name screaming across the chest  or rear), boys, sports, cell phones, iPods, roller skating, and other ‘tweeny stuff. Cecilia has suddenly tried on this personality for size, too, and I have to say that I missed her sweeter self, the more “Cecilia” Cecilia, the kid. Nostalgia for a lost little child, one that was all mine. And now although she is unwilling to give up her toys and crafts – she can still spend hours at it and often does, she has to do it alone instead of with her school friends to avoid ostracism if she revealed her littler self. I thought it was a reasonable, though sad, compromise: don’t give it up, but don’t make herself vulnerable to mockery by sharing it.

The exception is her friend Kathryn, the daughter of a dear friend of mine, a girl she’s known all her life, whom she has sisterly spats with and walks away in a huff… but only so many days can go by before Cecilia tells me she misses Kathryn – she needs a Kat fix. They go to different schools, so both seem to feel comfortable revealing that inner layer of child they each still hold so dear. Sometimes Kathryn’s mother and I listen to them play, and we look at each other and wistfully sigh, keenly aware that these days are numbered yet tickled that our children still hold onto the joyful abandon of childhood and have someone to share it with.

Last year, our first year back in the U.S., Cecilia went to a private, alternative school where not only can kids be kids until eighth grade (and they emphatically are!), but the five-year-olds easily play with the twelve-year-olds. A magical place. On the last day of class, two mothers and their daughters from Cecilia’s class invited us to join them in their yearly “school’s out” ritual of lunch and then the bookstore to pick up summer reading material. At the bookstore, as we mothers chatted on foot-high stools in the kids’ book section, we heard the girls’ laughter and chattering, and I turned around. There they were, three 11-to-12-year-olds, playing with the toy train set there to entertain little kids. I realized what a blessing that school had been, that with her school friends they could still play, still be little and innocent, still laugh with childish glee, not oh-so-knowing cattiness, and let their minds wander and imaginations soar.

If only I could have afforded to keep Cecilia in that school, but it was a home of our own or school, and home won out. How I miss the child that she could be there! Yet this past spring break, back in Spain again, no sooner did we enter our home than Cecilia disappeared upstairs. I was busy unpacking, but after about an hour I snuck up there to see what she was up to. There was my mature, clever, knowing 12-year-old surrounded by a sea of old costumes, a vast farm scenario already set up – big as our living room in the U.S. – her doll house tidied and redecorated. She had literally marked her territory, or reclaimed it, in truth. Cecilia was wallowing in, relishing, frolicking in her childhood again, and soon her best friends Maria, Anabel and Ramon joined her. And I realized just why it is so hard for us to imagine giving up that home in Spain: that is her childhood home, a magical place where she can create her own world, dress crazy, fight over who gets what horse, make up dances, draw and paint on her easel, make tiny little make-believe voices, take boxes, pieces of paper and other odds and ends and turn them into whatever her heart desires and imagination conjures up. There Cecilia can return to her original, truest self, and I can reclaim my baby, my little girl, my crazy, madcap, silly, beautiful little Tweety whom I miss so much.

The Perils of Academia

April 20, 2011

As I prepare to enter academia as a student for the first time in over two decades, I am full of trepidation. I grew up in academia; I know its pitfalls. I know the departmental political in-fighting; I know the petulant rants and tirades of academics, which would get them fired in the business world; I know the petty territorial skirmishes, as savage as in the wild yet unacknowledged by the supposed aesthetes engaging in the battles. At least in the business world this competition is open and acknowledged; in academia it is denied under the veneer of culture and thus infinitely more vicious. I know that departments are, after all, microcosms of high schools with their dramas, cliques, and side-taking. Faculty are often polarized on both theory – understandable, at least – and personality – rather unforgiveable, to my mind. Lord, I am hoping I left high school far behind…

Some of the pitfalls of academia were so aptly expressed in Muriel Barbery’s book The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In this novel set in France, one of the narrators muses thus on the oh-so-intellectual thesis written by a resident of her haute bourgeois apartment building: “but intelligence, in itself, is neither valuable nor interesting. Very intelligent people have devoted their lives to the question of the sex of angels, for example.” I agree. Call me a pragmatist, but I disdain purely intellectual play with no thought of contributing to humanity’s betterment. I know. I’ve been there.

I wrote my MA thesis in Linguistics on “The Relative Nouniness and Verbiness of Gerunds and Infinitives”. Yikes – it pains me to write it. Do you even know what gerunds and infinitives are? Most people don’t and are none the worse for their ignorance. Now, I did enjoy the intellectual game, but let’s face it: who cares? Through what stretch of the imagination could the relative nouniness or verbiness of anything count? In what way might it conceivably matter? How on earth could anyone be bettered, uplifted, enlightened by this thesis? Yet I passed with flying colors, my thesis advisors and committee praising my innovative approach to analyzing gerunds and infinitives. Wow. An innovative approach to analyzing gerunds and infinitives. Now that’s what the world needs. My thesis was like taking a microscope to a very tiny corner of human knowledge and further dissecting that minuscule corner. The light shed on that little nook will never filter up to normal human beings, you and me. So I consider it a futile effort, and even then I knew it was. It is no wonder I escaped from academia as soon as I graduated, despite my professors’ entreaties to begin a PhD. I needed to reconnect with the real world, with real problems, and with real people.

In another passage, Barbery brilliantly picks apart the basic strategy of academics as they desperately try to ‘publish or perish’, often scratching out meager little corners in their field that could hardly be of wider interest just so they can publish something, anything (and the plethora of academic journals only adds to this syndrome), pad their résumés and thus earn tenure. Apparently this is universal, or at least rife in Europe as well, as Barbery states in the field of philosophy:

…if you want to make a career, take a marginal, exotic text that is relatively unexplored, abuse its literal meaning by ascribing to it an intention that the author himself had not been aware of…, distort that meaning to the point where it resembles an original thesis, [and] devote a year of your life to this unworthy little game…

I’ve been there, too. I remember my friends who were earning their Master’s in English dissecting a text to a molecular degree that the author was unlikely to have imagined in his or her wildest dreams. I, too, kept publishing after I started working, squeezing one micro-insight after another from well-worn, hackneyed material just to publish it and be able to list it on my résumé.

I was climbing the professional ladder then. At some point, I hopped off. I just lost interest. That’s someone else’s game, and I have no interest in playing it. Publishing when I actually have something to say is a worthy goal; publishing just to stay ahead of the game (or barely tread water, as the case may be) is a bore, a futile, self-serving end in itself. As Barbery, my new intellectual heroine, says, “What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others?”

I hope that as I start my new degree, a PhD in Anthropology, I can find a way to avoid trifling office politics and make a contribution that will enrich all of us. To serve others, as Barbery says. I hope I can avoid the perils, pitfalls, and politics of academia and instead find its rich vein, then mine it for my and the world’s edification. What a hopeless idealist, after all this time. Still, if you ever feel a pressing urge to explore nouniness and verbiness, you know who to ask. Good to know!

Rugged Individualism

April 13, 2011

Every country has its national myths, stories about itself that shape and define its identity. Catalans have the myth of seny, meaning wisdom or sensibleness, and rauxa, or impulsiveness. Most foreigners I know living in Catalonia would be hard-pressed to identify specifically wise or impulsive traits among the natives, but scratch the surface, really ask a Catalan about his or her national traits, and seny and rauxa are always mentioned.

We Americans have our own myth of rugged individualism. You know, the brave pioneer family – or individual – striking out on their own, into the wilderness, conquering the land (um, not to mention the people that were there before them… but that’s another issue). The individualist who thinks for himself doesn’t want government (Big Brother, that is) messing with his life. Our heroic icons: successful people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, the self-made (wo)man, the Marlboro man. Do your own thing. March to the beat of your own drummer. Our language is rife with words and images that express our exaltation of individualism, and we can thank Herbert Hoover for coining the term ‘rugged individualism’, as he put it, “those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life”. Yikes! Sounds like a scary, overly self-righteous super-race to me! Sounds tiring, too.

We contrast this to more collectivist cultures, ones that value the group and make decisions based on the community. We disparagingly refer to herd mentality, to following the pack, drawing on animal metaphors to show the inferiority of this kind of society. We view this as weakness, as a lack of moral, intellectual, and/or physical strength. We pity their weakness, spinelessness, lack of self-reliance compared to our super-evolved culture of advanced individualists, monoliths uniquely capable of weathering the storms of life on their own. I am a rock; I am an island. We write self-help literature to counter this social disease: “codependence” is a bad word, and anyone who is simply dependent deserves our pity, not to mention disdain.

Yet this myth is not only belied by the history of mankind; it is also belied by the history of America. Banding together has always been a survival strategy for humans; how else could we have outwitted all the other animals we competed, and essentially still compete, against? We are, after all, the naked ape – a pretty harmless, almost laughable, specimen compared to our mammal brethren. Think about the covered wagons of those pioneers. Rarely did a pioneer family strike out on their own, and if they did, they rarely survived. Instead, groups of pioneers travelled together, and when evening fell they drew their wagons into a circle to protect themselves against any external threats.  When they reached their destination, neighbors pitched in to help each other build houses. The pioneers relied on each other.

We all survive because we rely on each other. We form societies to lean on each other. Humans don’t live in isolation, except the occasional crazy – or spiritual – hermit, or perhaps the uniquely American phenomenon: the survivalist, individualism taken to the nth degree. Also the exception that proves the rule. While thinking for oneself is undoubtedly a virtue, why do Americans glorify individualism to such an extent? We are so afraid of being engulfed by the group that we make life harder for ourselves. Why do we see relying on each other as a sign of weakness instead of strength, not to mention simply a sign of our humanity, or our humanness? Why isn’t reliance viewed as a human need… as well as a wonderful opportunity to generously give the people we rely on the chance to grow by helping us? I suppose there are occasional freestanding people of genius who manage to achieve greatness without anyone’s help, but I dare you to name one.

I don’t advocate blind adherence to the group, mindlessly conforming to what some randomly-chosen ‘leader’ says we should do, listening to ignorant hype and believing it to be the truth. I believe in thinking for ourselves and informing ourselves about the world. But I also believe that there is strength in numbers, and that self-reliance is hugely overrated. Why is alienation such a uniquely American ailment? When asked to share their first impressions of Americans, my students from more collectivistic cultures say ‘lonely’. I defend Americans – we like to be alone, we choose to be alone, I tell them. And that’s not a total lie, yet there is some truth in the loneliness of Americans.

My students are also horrified by the idea of feeling pressured to move out of your parents’ house at age 18. Let’s face it, now that we’re older we know that an 18-year-old is a child. Few have the wherewithal to make wise choices. On top of it, if they are going to college they’re probably already in debt from student loans, so why dig them deeper in the hole? For what? The much-vaunted independence? Living in squalor to prove their strength? That’s cruel. I did it – we all did. We had to or risk shame at our immaturity. I got in debt for doing it. And I got myself into hairy situations – which fortunately worked out well – that I wasn’t mature enough to handle. The situation in Spain where adults live with their parents well into their thirties isn’t the idea either, but 18 is awfully young to throw our offspring into the cruel world. Independence? They’ll get there… we all do.

When the miners in Chile were trapped, the news reported the following: “Though some miners have requested them, personal music players with headphones and handheld videogames have been ruled out, because those tend to isolate people from one another.  With earphones, if they're listening to music and someone calls them, asking for help or to warn them about something, they're not available. What they need is to be together." (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/202026/chiles-trapped-miners-get-brad-pitt-not-nintendo) Togetherness equals survival. Standing alone is for the strong; togetherness is for the weak. But don’t we band together as a society precisely for the strong to help the weak, and for the whole to be stronger than its parts? Aren’t we all weak at some point in our lives? Or is that just a liberal view of what a society and community should be?

To my mind, collectivism is the very definition of society. We band together, work together, survive together, flourish together. We take care of each other, help each other, give to and take from each other. We are each other’s biggest responsibility. This is a sign of our higher consciousness and humanity. Viciousness, competition, and survival of the fittest are the law of the jungle. As humans, haven’t we risen above that?

The Red-Eye

April 3, 2011

Saint Louis, MO – Chicago, IL

6 a.m., March 11, 2011

We are bleary-eyed like everyone. Six a.m. Who can deal? But we line up, check our bags en route (a very circuitous route) to Spain. We board, settle in, look around. The plane is filled with mainly businessmen (some businesswomen). I note the men. Big, hearty Midwestern guys. At least six feet tall, bulges around the midriff. Dress shirts half-tucked in, half-untucked. Ties askew. Jackets rolled into balls and used as pillows for the duration of the flight or jammed into the overheads. Oblivious to their surroundings except to sleepily greet whoever is near them with a good-natured comment. Hair haphazardly cut and combed. Totally unaware that they might be making an impression, that anyone is looking at them. Tired, slightly sweaty already. Decent fellows (almost said “chaps”, as my British friends might).

Barcelona – Madrid, Spain

6 a.m., March 21, 2011

We are bleary-eyed like everyone. Six a.m. Who can deal? But we line up, check our bags en route (a very circuitous route) back to Illinois. We board, settle in, look around. The plane is filled with mainly businessmen (some businesswomen). I note the men. Trim, neat, stylish. Five-eight to six feet max. Well-ironed shirts (ironed by their wives or cleaning ladies, if the wives are lucky; if not, they’ll stay up ‘til one in the morning to make sure their husbands – and children – are well-pressed). Ties neat. Jackets carefully removed, folded lining-out, neatly stowed. Aware of the impression they’re making; perhaps a curt nod and “Buenos días/Bon dia” to the person next to them. Hair well-cut, neatly combed, sometimes slicked back, old-style, with “gomina”. Subtly looking around the cabin, noting who is there, who is worth noting, what impression they’re making. Tired, perhaps, but polished. Attractive, knowing men.

The American guy. He’s a good guy, a simple guy, a man’s man. Feminine side atrophied, if it ever existed. The Spanish guy. He’s clever, perhaps too clever by half, philosophical and therefore not at all simple, a woman’s man. Feminine side well developed, enough to wield when useful.

The other night I was out with two friends, Spanish and Ecuadoran women, married to Americans. They know all about Latin men, love them, but prefer to marry the decent American lug. Me? I know that decent American lug. I miss the witty, knowingly charming, polished Latin man, the one who knows what to say when. My friends say, “Yes, they sweet-talk you but behind your back who knows what they’re up to, while my American guy may lack in the graces but he’s solid and faithful.” So right. Damn… where’s my hybrid?!?

The Joys of Netflix

March 8, 2011

Ah the joys of Netflix! After months of being prodded by friends, I recently gave in and signed up after the local Blockbuster shut down. As it should. Natural selection. After all, why actually leave the comfort of your home to venture out into the scary world, drive a car and possibly be killed, enter a Blockbuster store and run the risk of catching a pernicious infection carried by some ill person who forgot to slather their hands in anti-bacterial gel before touching the door handle, perform the desultory task of trolling the aisles for videos, perhaps next to some perv in the you-know-what aisle, engage in chit-chat with the unsavory clerk, and then have to risk your life all over again just to get home? I mean, why do all that when you can sit in your jammies at the computer, click and watch?

Yes, the joys of never having to leave home, never having to see the outside world, never having to put ourselves at risk of crazy drivers and lethal bacteria, never having to engage with anyone outside our own cozy circle! And imagine the perfect Saturday night: why bother getting dressed up, maybe even putting on make-up and heels, going through the effort of actually going out, perhaps somewhere different…? Why actually interact with other people and run the risk of meeting someone new, hearing a new story, getting a new viewpoint, being challenged in yours, actually connecting with another human being…? I mean, really. Why bother when your very own couch beckons you into its comfortable, womblike embrace and you can vicariously live someone else’s life on the TV screen and never, ever have to deal with the messy, scary world outside?

Ah, this American life… this is the life!

On Llufes and Pets

March 4, 2011

If you find farts distasteful, stop reading now.

Um, let me rephrase that. If you find farts disgusting, crude, rude, nasty, stanky things… No, that’s not it either.

The third time is the charm: If it doesn’t bother you to read about farts and other earthy matters, keep reading. You see, the Catalans are fart masters. I’m not saying they issue more gas than anyone else, but I am saying that their vocabulary for talking about farts is more refined and descriptive than ours, similar to the way the Inuit have countless words to talk about snow. They perfectly capture the glorious taxonomy of farting with two words that encapsulate the two very different kinds of burps in the pants. Sorry? What is a burp in the pants, you ask? Well it’s what our parents told my sister, brother, and I that farts were called in our childhood because ‘fart’ was a bad word, until, that is, Mark, the older boy who lived across the street, burst out laughing when he heard us say ‘burp in the pants’ and quickly straightened us out.  Humiliated by our naiveté yet secretly thrilled with the forbidden word, we quickly adopted ‘fart’.

Now, it’s not like English doesn’t have its own synonyms or euphemisms for farts, and especially for the act of farting: breaking wind, cutting the cheese, and tooting on the more colloquial side, along with the Southern-girl classic, “Who pooted?”, and flatulence on the more medical side. But the Catalans make an essential difference: the llufa versus the pet. Yes, pet. More on that below.

A llufa is what we call in English an SBD, silent-but-deadly. In English we need to cobble together three words to describe it, just the way we have to say ‘falling snow’ where the Inuits say qanik, and ‘snow on the ground’ where they say anijo. Circumlocutions don’t count – words, solitary, freestanding words, tell all about what matters to a society. A llufa is the stealthy, foul kind of fart, the kind that creeps up on you, engulfs you, and makes you cry out “WHO FARTED?!?!” The other kind of fart, the kind you hear, is called a pet in Catalan. Of course this leads to no end of mirth when Americans and Catalans find this out about each other’s lexis (“How many pets do you have?” “Oh, honey, an endless supply…”). A pet is a more innocent fart, the kind that you – I mean, someone else – “lets rip” but that causes no serious olfactory harm.

If a society has several words for the same phenomenon, it’s because that phenomenon weighs heavily in their collective consciousness.  Catalans actually have somewhat of a scatological obsession, and I think farts would fit into that category. If you doubt me; if you think I am overgeneralizing or propagating negative stereotypes, I challenge you to go visit Catalonia at Christmastime. There, the Christmas markets are filled with caganers, usually male (although sometimes female) figurines that Catalans place in their beloved – and quite impressive and elaborate – nativity scenes at home, figurines with their pants down, squatting, with a thick, curly pile of turds under their butt. Uh huh, I kid you not. Look it up. You can almost see the steam…

The other scatological Christmas item is the cagatió, a wooden log with sticks attached as legs and a face drawn on one end. A traditional red barretina – a hat remarkably similar to Santa Claus’s, now that I think of it – is placed on the cagatió’s head and then, because we appreciate his need for privacy, his rear is covered with a blanket. The children then feed the cagatió (which, incidentally, means ‘Shit Log’), and of course, after eating, the guy’s gotta do his duty. So the kids beat the cagatió with a stick as they wait for him to put forth (the effluvium is presents for the kids, no less), singing:

 

Cagatió, avellanes i torrons,                                                             

Si no cagues bé

et daré un cop de bastó.                    

(or some variation thereof).

(Shit Log, hazelnuts and nougat,

If you don’t shit well,

I’ll hit you with my stick.)

I kid you not. Beat a log, he cacas and you get presents. But it gets better. How do you say two people are so close they're like peas in a pod? Well, in Catalan they say they're like "el cul i la merda", literally, "the butt and the shit". I mean, really: should we lock these people up?

So the Catalans’ interest in farts should come as no surprise.  It took me a good 15 years to be enlightened on the fine distinction between llufes and pets, and I have Gemma to thank. One night when my daughter Cecilia invited her friend Gemma to spend the night – it must have been when they were eight or nine years old – we all crawled into Cecilia’s bed before going to sleep, all three of us, talking and giggling about God knows what, when suddenly Gemma uttered the magical words: “WHO FARTED?” In Catalan: “QUI HA TIRAT UNA LLUFA?” I stopped in my tracks. “A llufa?” I asked her. “What’s a llufa?” When she told me I asked her about the only word I had heard until then: “Isn’t that called a pet?” She then shared with me the insightful and oh-so-accurate distinction between llufa and pet. That kept us up giggling – and holding our noses – another half hour at least… and I’m not going to blow the cover of the guilty party, either!

Of course we Americans, some of us at least, truly do enjoy a good laugh over farts. Please tell me I’m not the only one who with girlfriends at sixth-grade sleepovers would empty a can of Pringles and proceed to… well, I’d better not continue in case my friends and I were weird beyond the pale. If you don’t know how that story ends, please, just drop it…

Ahem.

There are certain words in every language that are so perfect that I believe every other language should have them, words that utterly capture something: a feeling, a thought, a social act, or, in this case, a bodily function. Llufa and pet fit into this category in all their onomatopoeic perfection, and I know that even though we speak English in my home and left Catalonia over a year ago, llufa and pet are two borrowed words that, sorry to say, we utter all too often.