I love my gypsy cab lady!
Everyday she waits outside of my apartment complex for potential customers. She drives a little red four door Chevy Spark, which in my opinion says a lot about her personality. Every time she sees me, she starts waving and laughing and I can’t help but accept her offer of a ride. She usually drives me to work in the morning, because lately I have been unable to wake up early enough to catch our 7:15AM work bus.
Even though I have taken plenty of rides with her, I have never really been able to have a conversation with her. (I’m pretty much incapable of true Mandarin conversation with anyone, but even less so with her.) We don’t understand each other, but that doesn’t stop her from gabbing away the entire ride. I just sit there thinking I am so stupid because I can’t understand anything she says. Anyway, today I told her that the weather was good, not cold and I guess Spring is here… and she understood me. Then something strange happened. She explained to me, and again I understood her, that I speak Putonghua, but she doesn’t. So it turns out that all this time I couldn’t make out what she was saying because she speaks some kind of local dialect, that probably uses words very similar to Putonghua (and surely they are written with the same characters) but her pronunciation is all wacky. So when she spoke in Putonghua, I could understand her a lot better (but not everything – she talks a mile a minute.)
Finally she figured out that if she speaks slow Putonghua, I might understand her. This is how I came to know that she is 46 years old. When I told her I am 34, she freaked out. And this is the moment I decided she is my favorite Chinese person. She went on and on about how I look younger, how I don’t have any eye wrinkles, how I am not fat, how my skin is so pale. Keeping up with Chinese modesty values, I told her that it was all untrue… but I could have hugged her.
(Putonghua = Mandarin Chinese)
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Awww! I see why you like her so much. Driving you to work is probably the highlight of her morning!!!