“Mutant Soup” and Our Bi-racial, Bi-cultural, Multi-lingual Clusterfuck

7/12/2019 12:56:05 AM

Mrs. Hornibastard #3 and I have been together quite a while. We have been very happy in our relationship. Much happier than anyone would have predicted we would be.

On paper, we make an improbable couple. There were, and still are, so many things that divide us. Mrs. Hornibastard #3 is so much younger than I am. She is easily young enough to be my daughter. I am from West Texas. She is from East Java. She is a devout Muslim. I am an atheist. I am an attorney and she has only a very limited formal education. I’m fairly stupid and she is uncommonly bright. When we first met I could barely speak any of the languages that she speaks fluently and she could not speak any of the languages that I spoke.

Despite the hurdles, we have made a very happy life together and now have 10 year old twins.

But to this day, even though she now speaks English reasonably well and I have learned to speak Indonesian well enough to draft contracts in that language, we often have great difficulty understanding each other.

Simple matters like the distinction between “today” and “tomorrow” are often the basis for our misunderstandings. For Mrs. Hornibastard #3, “tomorrow” begins at the next sunrise. For me, “tomorrow” begins at the next midnight. If we get up in the wee hours of the morning, she might speak about going to a friend’s house for lunch “tomorrow.” I used to get confused and said things like, “You said we were going to lunch at your friend’s house today.” Eventually I began to understand that, if what I would call “today’s sunrise” is still in future, then as far as she is concerned, it’s not “tomorrow” yet. In her mind we are still in what I would now call “yesterday.”

I recall when we were in the very early phase of our relationship and she was perusing my CD music collection (back when people still kept their music on CDs). She asked me if I had “Rectal.”

“Rectal? I never heard of Rectal! What kind of band are they?”

“Rectal is not a band. It’s the name of a song.”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Who recorded this song?”

“Aerosmith.”

I had (or I thought I had) all of Aerosmith’s recordings but I couldn’t recall any song by Aerosmith called Rectal.

“I don’t know of any recording by Aerosmith called Rectal.”

“Oh come on, it’s one of their most popular songs!”

I went down my mental list of Aerosmith tunes.

“Do you mean Ragdoll?”

“Of course! That’s what I’ve been saying ... Rectal! What’s wrong with your ears?”

Mrs. Hornibastard #3 once offered to make me some mutant soup. She kept asking me whether I liked mutant soup. I kept asking her what she was talking about it.

“You know ... soup with chopped mutant in it.”

Finally I gave up and said, “Oh right! Mutant soup. Yes, I love mutant soup! Let’s have some of that for dinner!”

A couple of hours later she served up some fabulous mutton soup.

https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=1878

Now our 10-year old daughter sometimes corrects her mom’s English while her mom is busy chewing her out for some childish gaffe. She just can’t figure out that it is spectacularly bad timing to correct her mom’s English while her mom is busy yelling at her.