Lost in execution

You would have noticed that my last post departed from the usual style and focused on something other than the first person stuff I’ve been banging on with. I’ll probably do that from time to time as I am so frequently outraged by some numpty or other in the news, I may as well share my opinion with you too! However, today we go back to my usual banging on.  

LSH is Canadian. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before. But he is. And we forgive him for it. That’s a joke, by the way. I truly love that he’s Canadian and a proud Canadian – at that. I am, mostly, a proud English person. I love the country that I’m from. There’s so much about it I find wonderful. Okay, mainly just the awesome access to music, great variety of fashion, great junk food and the pub culture. But there’s something different about the way LSH truly loves being Canadian. He wears Canadian shirts (apparently something they all do, but I am yet to see for myself) loves his Roots (the brand, you dirty minded people) and he love loves ice hockey.

Roots is a ridiculous name for a brand, I admit that. LSH bought me a Roots jumper a few years ago on one of his trips home and it said “Roots Squad”. I wore it to my parents’ place for dinner one evening and told my dad that I was in LSH’s Roots Squad. Only now am I realising how completely awkward that joke was. At the time, LSH went bright red and slid under the table. Not sure if he was embarrassed for himself or for me.

Anyway, occasionally we have some lost in translation moments. For instance, instead of saying orange, he said awnge. Of course he thinks I say oringe.  Instead of mirror he says meer. Again, LSH says that I say meeeroor. He says Ceyan wrap for Glad wrap or cling film. He seems to believe that I say porn shop instead of pawn shop (since we don’t actually frequent either establishment, you’d be surprised how much this comes up in conversation). Apparently the difference is that porn, as in buw chicka bup bow, is pronounced porn, whereas pawn, as in second hand, is pronounced pahan.

Occasionally, he’ll add an “A” to the end of sentences. So “let’s have lunch”, becomes “let’s have lunch A”. Oddly, and probably thankfully, for fear of my merciless teasing, he doesn’t say aboot.  So, after nearly eight years, I’ve grown accustomed to some of his vernacular and he mine. However, just this very morning, we had one of our “huh” moments.

I was sitting on the couch, eating my porridge, as I do, for breakfast. Our dog loves porridge, and since I have lactose free milk, she is often the happy recipient of my leftovers. So we sat, Ginger, the dog, with her head on my knee looking wistfully into my bowl of porridge, and me tyring to ignore just how cute she is when she wants something.

LSH pipes up with “she only has eyes for the porch.” Now, we don’t actually have a porch in our house, we have a front deck, but no porch. So, I said, thinking he has lost his mind from too much caffeine, and couldn't see the dog such was his hallucination, “but she’s right here, in front of you and in front of me.”

“I know,” he said, “she’s only interested in the porch.”

So now I’m thinking is he calling me a porch. Is he making comment about my thighs? Is my knee a porch? So while, perhaps, he might not say that I’m the size of a house, he would instead say that I’m a front porch?

“What are you talking about?” I said, starting to lose my patience, as I so often wrongly do when I don’t seem to understand something. I have a tendency to think it’s the other person not, as the case may be, my lack of intellectual ability.

“Your breakfast,” he raises his voice, “that” and points to my porridge.

I start laughing, “how on earth can you possibly think that porch is porridge?”

“It’s porch. Porch. How can you not understand that when I say porch I mean porch,” LSH is starting to get frustrated and sharply stabs his finger at my porridge.

“Uhm, because it’s porridge,” I say, slowly,  like I'm talking to an idiot. I think I'm being funny so much so that I start to laugh again and a little bit of spit and porridge may have fallen out of my mouth. LSH is trying to be stern but is having one of his Seinfeld moments where his voice raises an octave when he's trying to prove a point and not laugh all at the same time.


“Again, you’re saying paaawreedge. You should just say porch. It’s just like how you can’t seem to phonetically differentiate between pahan (pawn) and porn… ”

Here we go again. Half the fun of our relationship is never really understanding what the other person is saying.  Realistically, that’s probably why it works.