This side of that conversation.

Today I walked over to Sbarro to order me some spaghetti. I noticed a girl was sort of hovering around the area...you know, where she's not really in line, but she's clearly thinking about eating there and she's sort of weighing her options. You could tell she was concerned or confused about something, because she kept stepping like she was about to get into line, but then she'd sort of change her mind, step back into her hovering position and look even more flustered.

I didn't really think much of it, and walked over to the back of the line. As I grabbed a tray, I heard an accented voice say behind me,

"Excuse me?"

I turned around. It was that girl. I don't want to make fun of her, so I'm adjusting how/what she said to represent how a native speaker might express what she said. In reality it was very difficult to understand her, both because of her word choice/order and accent. So here's more or less what she said to me:

"Um...I'm new here...could you please explain how I order and what to order?" You could literally feel her embarrassment.

Oh boy, do I know what that feels like. I know what that flustered pacing feels like, when you really want to order food but you don't know how this place works or even how to pronounce what you want. When you don't get lettuce on your hamburger at Burger Bar because you can't remember the word for it. When you point at the word in the menu for you want because, even though you know what it is, you don't know how to actually pronounce the word. A lot of the time I would try to avoid this embarrassment by just buying food at the supermarket--you don't have to ask for things there. If you see something you want to eat, you just take it without ordering. The only thing you have to say is "No" when they ask you if you are part of the club or if you want to buy something from the sales. But ordering food at a restaurant or food court would turn me into a nervous wreck.

So I explained to this girl the process of ordering food at Sbarro. She asked me what I was getting, so I said spaghetti and meatballs. She asked me which dish that was, so I pointed at it. She said, "Okay, I'll get that too....but how do you pronounce this? (pointing at the card labeled 'spaghetti')" I told her, and then she quietly repeated to herself, "Spuhgeddi......spuhgeddi...spuhgeddi" so she wouldn't forget.

It really made me wonder why I didn't ask people for help in Israel. I guess it's because I'm shy in general, but also I was afraid of getting made fun of. But here I was on the other side of the conversation, and I have to tell you, there wasn't anything funny about it. I don't know if maybe my past experiences made this not funny to me, or if it's sort of a general thing that no one would make fun of another person for. My instinct is to say that an Israeli would have laughed at me for asking for help in this area, since I got made fun of for a lot of other things relating to language, but I guess I'll never know for sure since I never really asked an Israeli to help me with Hebrew at a restaurant.

At that point the man behind the counter handed me a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, then handed me a breadstick. The girl then looked confused all over again, and asked, "Please explain this to me."

Me: "The breadstick?"
Her: "....yes?"
Me: "Well...it's a bread....um......stick---uh, I guess it's just bread. But it's good. You should get it."


Eventually we both finished ordering, and as we parted ways we gave each other a smile and a thumbs up.

It was sort of like doing the immigrant full circle. I wanted to be like, "I've BEEN you before." In any case, I have to tell you...it feels REALLY good to be back on this side of that conversation.