My yard guy cracks me up. His name is Mr. Escobar. I never can remember his first name so I keep wanting to call him Pablo which I'm pretty sure isn't correct, politically or otherwise. I wonder if they're related? Not that I think every Escobar is related to Pablo, I just don't know that many Escobars.
He showed up at my door a few weeks ago when Jayson was out of town and the grass was in desperate need of grooming. He offered his services at a reasonable price so I accepted. Then shortly afterwards I discovered that the only English words he knows are 'mow yard', the days of the week, and $40.
He speaks almost no English and I speak almost no Spanish but we manage to "okay" our way through a conversation. He's even called my cell phone a few times which is particularly difficult since we don't have that body language thing to help us try to translate what the other is saying. He goes on and on in Spanish and I keep saying "okay", then I repeat in English what I think he might have said and he keeps saying "okay". For some reason I get progressively louder and louder as if yelling at him will help him to understand what I'm saying. Then we hang up. So far it's worked for us.
Last week he mowed on a day when I wasn't home so I've been expecting him to show up looking for his payment. He came by yesterday to pick it up and to let me know when he would be back to mow again. I'm not exactly sure when that is but that's okay, I know he'll be back.
Mr. Escobar is quite chatty and began telling me a story that may or may not have been important. The only words I understood were convenience store, Pakistani, and 1:00 a.m. At one point he sort of rolled his eyes, let out a deep breath and wiped his brow.
I'm getting pretty good at this translating/decoding body language thing so I think he was telling me that he also works at a convenience store owned by his Pakistani friend and he didn't get home until 1:00 a.m. so he was very tired. Smart, huh?
Or maybe he was held up at a convenience store at 1:00 a.m. by a Pakistani and barely escaped with his life.
Either way I just smiled, nodded and said really loud, "OKAY!"
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