Posted by Gregory Wienke (greg 1969)

(Welcome aboard Greg!!!)

As many of you may know (and now the rest of you do!), I lived in Mexico for a year and a half (in 1993-1994). These are a couple stories that happened when I was there. I hope you enjoy them.

A colleague of mine and I were talking about the nickname for Gregorio that they use in Mexico (if nowhere else!), “Goyo”. I hated the nickname (it sounded too “little-boyish”, among other reasons), and I refused to answer to it. I also mentioned that the name “gringo” doesn’t bother me at all. So, as we were getting ready to leave, he said “OK, Gringorio, adios!” I LOVED the name—I was rolling on the floor laughing for days!—and the name stuck. I used it when I taught ESL to break the ice with my Spanish-speaking students, and they always got a laugh out of it. I still get lots of mileage out of it!

During a meeting over dinner that I was having with a Mexican colleague, we got to talking about a book called “The Cross and the Switchblade”. In Spanish, the book translates as

“La Cruz y el Puñal”. However, I made a “tip-of the-slongue” (which I knew immediately that I’d done!) and said instead, “La Cruz y el Pañal". Translated, that means, “The Cross and the Diaper”! (Obviously, that was the end of THAT discussion! We were laughing too hard!) INSTANTLY I knew what I’d said, and we were rolling on the floor over that for months!

When I first came to North Carolina, I had just returned from Mexico, and I was still thinking, almost automatically, in Spanish. One of the grocery stores in this area is named INGLES, after the founder’s last name “Ingle”. (I would later find that “Ingle” is a VERY common surname in this area!) It took me a LONG time, since I would still think in Spanish, not to read the name as “ingles”. (“Inglés”? Why would they name a store after a language”? Even funnier, as I would get a laugh out of my Spanish-speaking ESL students, is that the store-front says, “American Owned”! Hmmm!... Inglés is American Owned!)

My daughter, Jacquelyne, who is now 12, was almost 3 when we made our first trip to this Ingles store. My wife, Barbara, my mother, and Jacquelyne and I all went on the trip. (Since neither Barbara nor I can drive, my mother was our transport. Jacquelyne called her “Nana”). As we were about to pull out of the driveway, Jacquelyne said,

“Nana, we’re going to the Ingles!”

“Correcting” her, I said, “No, Jacquelyne, we are going to the Inglés !”

VERY STERNLY, Jacquelyne said, “NO, Daddy! We are going to the INGLES!”

“No, Jacquelyne,” I said, equally seriously. “We are going to the Ingles!”

Back and forth we went a couple times: “Ingles!”—“Inglés!” “INGLES!”—“Inglés!”

Exasperated, Jacquelyne turned and said, “Nana? Mommy? Daddy can’t read!”