1312 Misspeak

I admit I don’t always get things right.
Like when it comes to my car. I had a guy ask me the other day if I ever rotated my tires, and I said, “What are you talking about? I rotate them every time I drive down the street.”
Likewise when he asked how often I changed my oil. “You’re supposed to change it?” I asked. “I thought I was always supposed to use 30-weight.”
“No,” he said, “change it out.”
“I never need to,” I said. “It must just burn off, because I always have to put new stuff in. I guess it changes itself.”
That’s the tricky thing about our language. Words like “change” and “rotate” can have subtle differences. Other languages have similar problems. When I took Spanish in school, I had difficulties.
First, because my name was Jerry, the teacher decided I should be called Geronimo. Pretty cool in one way, but hard to live up to in Junior High. That whole Indian raider thing doesn’t cut it in math class.
Later, I found out Geronimo comes from the name Hieronymus, as in Hieronymus Bosch, that guy that painted weird pictures of hell. He must have gone to my Junior High.
“Hieronymus” is Latin for “Sacred Name.” Which must be why when I came to school dressed in a loincloth and carrying a hand axe the principal yelled out, “Jesus!”
In any event, Spanish could be challenging. Like the word for Thursday is J-u-e-v-e-s jueves and the word for eggs is h-u-e-v-o-s- huevos. I’d always forget which was which, or worse, mumble them.
So later on when I went down to Acapulco I inevitably ordered scrambled Thursdays for breakfast. Or even worse, made an appointment with someone to meet me on an egg.
America, ya gotta love it.