Today, I sat across a table from a man who told a lie. But I didn't call him on it.

The story sounded legit. Maybe you've heard it—the one about staying in a foreign hotel and communicating an innocuous request to the staff in your broken version of their language, only to have your words taken for something bawdy.

The first time I heard this one, years ago, it involved someone's Spanish-speaking uncle calling the front desk in an American hotel. He needed a light bulb replaced but he didn't know the right English word to complete "I need a ___." So he took the Spanish word for bulb (foco) and just lopped off the o—uncles being uncles, you know.

Naturally, the clerk took this as a request for a call girl.

This time, the story was told in first person. The English-speaking businessman said he asked the Italian maid for more of the delicious figs that had been set out in a fruit bowl in his room. However, the Italian word for fig comes in two genders, and he got it wrong, inadvertently requesting an intimate part of the female anatomy. The blushing maid bolted the room, and hilarity ensued between the insulted hotel manager and the hapless traveler.

I didn't connect these two tales until about an hour after I heard the second one. Even so, if I'd realized our raconteur was fibbing as he spoke, I probably wouldn't have pointed it out. We were in a social setting, where even to imply that someone present is lying—particularly when the story is told for amusement and not to push a timeshare deal or something—is considered bad manners.

Furthermore, the situation reminded me of my early teen years, when I'd make up adventure stories to prove to my friends that I was just as—or more—daring. I was either good with details or they didn't have the argumentative skill to point out the unlikeliness of my tales, because I continued for years. Only the older boys would call me a liar, and I quickly learned not to ply them.

So, to some extent, I could empathize with this latter-day locutor. But I'm still perturbed that an adult would lie in the first person. It degraded his status in my eyes. It's one thing to pass along an urban legend; quite another to claim it happened to you.

I still have no proof the story is made up, though I found a similar theme at Snopes. For me, hearing a similar story from two different people is just too much of a coincidence. Maybe foreign-language instructors tell these stories to illustrate the dangers of guessing, and they get passed along just to have something funny to say.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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