pompino pompino pompino!

have you ever noticed how certain words make you cringe and others roll off the tongue without a second thought? it always used to amaze me how a combination of only a few letters could make someone laugh, cry, or become offended. and those are the words we intend to say. but what happens when you are learning a new language and make the simple mistake of inverting a few letters or mispronouncing a word ever so slightly...?

i have been studying italian for a little over a year and have somehow managed to offend and horrify a handful of people with my accidental dyslexia. although the other students make their mistakes here and there nobody has mastered the art of the foreign freudian slip quite like me.

during my first trip to italy i was talking (rather loudly) to an italian waiter and telling him how much i just loved the veal meatballs i had eaten the previous night. at least, that's what i thought i was telling him. the word i meant to say was polpette and i somehow squeezed out pompino. which means blow job. yes, i announced loudly to a roomful of italians that i LOVED blow jobs.

my mastering of the perverted slip didn't stop there. during italian class one day i was trying to tell my teacher about the time that i had found a $20 bill in the back of a cab. the past tense of i discovered is ho scoperto. but i said ho scopato. which meant that i had sex with a $20 bill in the back of a cab. but not just regular sex. dirty vulgar sex. to make it worse, he said it actually sounded more like i was a prostitute who let someone have their way with me for $20. so i wasn't just a slut. i was a cheap slut to boot!

but don't you worry. i don't keep these language blunders all to myself. i pass them along to the people i love. i was back in italy in april and was trying to teach my friend the difference between fico and figa. fico is fig. figa is vagina. my friend went to dinner without me one night and proudly asked the waitress for some vagina marmalade. which, of course, was not on the menu.

why do my friends and i only mix up words that make us sound like pervs? i'll have to check with my therapist on that one. but i have a feeling it's just the universe getting a good ole laugh. this october i'm returning to italy for a whole month. i can't wait to see how many more people my friends and i can offend with the accidental rearrangement of a few simple letters. the possibilities are endless...