[Scene is the local deli. I've just paid for my sandwich. There is a slight pause.]
Salesman: You like pickle?
Me: I love pickle.
[Salesman hands me a pickle.]
Author's Note: You see, the thing that's happening here is not that I'm making fun of a foreign man's wacky word construction, but rather, the fact that I thought he was asking me a general question about pickles.
3 comments:
Commenter's Note: Your response was parsimonious and pleasantly disarming, unlike the more pedestrian options of:
Yes, me like pickle long time! (Heh, heh, heh.)
[Reflects, then enlightened...] Why, yes, I do possess many of the qualities one would associate with a pickle!
I'd like to add that it turned out to be a really gross pickle.
Are you sure he didn't say, "Would you like to have a pickle, my dear fellow?"
New Yorkers have a way of filtering words out to make it all seem so wonderfully ethnic.
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