We were the only white people there, but that was a detail that seemed obvious, and worth thinking about, only to me. The rest of the swarm of shoppers were all busy, shoving and pushing and stealing from each others' carts. A mayhem of fabrics and house wares and colorful language, that I only think I understood, flew like a storm. From the midst of a pack of shoppers Lisa rose up triumphantly with a square-ish table lamp held high above her head. "GET THE CART!" I hurried over to her, doing my best to politely bump people out my way. Lisa put the lamp quickly and gently into the cart, covered it with a couple blouses she was debating buying, and threw her own coat over it as well. "Nobody can see it. It's mine. The last one. Let's get the hell out of this mad-house." She took over the driving duties of the cart, and I kept close behind her. Swirving and dodging, we made it to the check-out line. As we put one item after another on the conveyor belt, the lamp became uncovered and visible to all. Screaming women stampeded us and tried to break the lamp free from Lisa's iron grasp. And then, out of nowhere, Lisa screamed at all of them in Chinese. From their reaction, I could tell it was a perfectly worded and skillfully crafted insult, which drove some away and enraged the rest. The tidal wave of shoppers pushed once again, harder even though peopled with fewer bodies. Lisa shouted at them once more, protecting her lamp like a bear protecting her cub. She roared at them, and then began speaking to them. They fought less and argued more. The checkout line moved towards the cashier. As Lisa defended, I watched as the cashier scanned all our stuff. Shirts, gum, knock-off toys for the guys back home, sandals, and, of course, finally, the lamp. Lisa wouldn't let go of the lamp as the woman behind the counter scanned it, and when Lisa saw the price come up on the monitor, she lost it. I can only assume she said something like, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN $87.50!? THE TAG SAYS 70% OFF!" Perfect Chinese again, or so I thought. Regardless, I was amazed. I never heard her speak in any language other than a couple curse words in French and Spanish, and her occasional New York accent, which really wasn't another language, but then again, sometimes it is. The cashier responded with, what I thought was, "That's the wrong tag. I don't know how that tag got there. It's $87.50." I believe that Lisa's response was, "Do you know how hard I had to fight to get this lamp? Do you think I would have fought as hard for it as I did to pay full price? I got it because it was 70% off. I'm not leaving here until you give me my discount." The women from the tidal wave that had yet to disperse believed that they saw an opportunity. This was, after all, the last lamp of its kind in the whole store, and there was now a possibility that Lisa, the woman who fought so valiantly to get it in the first place, might not get it at all. The clerk behind the counter winked at one of the lingering women. Lisa turned her head to see what the wink was for. The cashier snatched the lamp out of Lisa's temporarily weakened grip, and tried to pass it along to the woman behind us. Lisa grabbed the lamp back, just before it got to the woman the cashier was trying to pass it to. Lisa then seemed to somehow grow in place, standing at her full height, and in a somewhat booming, yet still aggressively pleasant voice, commanded the cashier to ring her up, discount and all. The cashier obeyed, Lisa paid, and we made our way back to our hotel. The drive back was long, and I was grinning and wide-eyed the and consumed with awe the whole way. Once back in the privacy of our room, I just couldn't help but ask, "Lisa? How? When? When the hell did you learn Chinese!?" She gave me one of 'those looks' from under her brow while she finished packing the last of our bags that we didn't get to before we set out that morning, "Benjamin, come on. Don't be silly now. We've got a plane to catch." I couldn't believe it. She honestly thought I knew that she could speak Chinese. "Lisa, really, when did you learn Chinese?" "You don't know that I know Chinese?" "No. I mean, I know now, but wow! Chinese! Everyone I know just studied Spanish or French. But Chinese!" "I had to learn it," she began to explain, "in order to graduate from Shopping School." That was it. I was floored. Shopping School? I thought she was just jerking me around. "Come on, Shopping School? Are you kidding me? Really, Loolee, where did you learn Chinese?" "Benjamin, I learned Chinese when I learned Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean. That was basic second year stuff. All the girls know it." "All the girls!? What the…" Lisa just smiled at me patiently, and explained to me that Shopping School was a requirement for all women the world over. Women are shoppers after all, she said, and they go shopping often - for if you don't compete, what spice is there, really, in life? Or, at least, she said something like that. "What do you mean, 'all the girls'?" "Benjamin, your sister and your mother are world-class shoppers, don't you know that?" "What!? No." "Why do you think Adina went to London? She went to finish her training. Your mom met your dad in Israel while finishing her training. They're pro's." "Wha… Wha… Huh? What about you?" "I moved to San Diego because it was close to Mexico. I didn't feel like living in another country, and San Diego was close enough to one. That's why there's so much haggling going on down there - all these girls are in training." I was stunned, to say the least. She finished packing the last of our suitcases, and started wrapping the lamp, her trophy, in the shirts she just bought so as to protect it from the bumpy flight back. Once wrapped, she placed it softly into a smaller, hand carried bag, told me that she was all ready to go, and asked me if I had everything. "What other languages do you know?" "What? Benjamin, quit wasting time and call the bell-man." "What other languages do you know?" "Oh, Benjamin. I don't know, name one." "Russian." She started going off on what felt like how much she loved me in a series of sounds and accents that I could only mildly recognize as Russian, using years of watching movies as my only reference. I picked my jaw up from the floor, and tried again. "Swedish?" Again she rambled on with what I thought sounded like a joke, and I was right. As soon as she was done saying whatever it was that she was saying, she was flushed in the face and in tears from laughter. "I learned that in the sixth grade from Adina, and it just gets funnier every time I say it." Being the smart-ass, I just had to try, "Swahili?" I couldn't believe it. As a matter of fact, as soon as she started making strings of noises that resemble the Swahili language, I got a little scared. "YOU KNOW SWAHILI!? WHEN THE HELL DID YOU LEARN SWAHILI!?" "Benjamin, relax. Lots of people know languages. Besides, Adina and I had a blast learning that together." "Adina knows SWAHILI!?" "Of course," Lisa responded as if it were no big thing that she and my sister knew every language on the face of the planet, "we studied it together. Your mom was very insistent that we studied the languages of Africa. Almost as insistent as my mom was in our studying the languages of Asia." "Lisa? Why is there war?" The question even surprised me. But it was well founded. Why was there war? If over half the population of the planet was able to speak to, and understand each other, why was there war? "What?" "Why is there war, Lisa? If everyone can talk to each other and understand each other, why is there war?" "What do you mean?" "Why don't you use your language skills for good? Why don't all women just speak to each other, the world over, and settle everything already?" "Duh, because we studied shopping, not politics." |
