Come with me on a trip down Memory Lane. Our destination? Another RAS: Random Act of Stupidity.
While studying translation and interpretation in Belgium, I audited a class called “Introduction to the Arab World.” I was surprised to see two Arab ladies, maybe in their early thirties, in class. They didn’t know each other and were talking one morning. I was not used to their accents when they spoke French. After wondering for a short while what one of them had said, I couldn’t take it any more. And there’s no such thing as a stupid question, right? I asked, “Did you just ask that lady if she had two butt-cheeks?” Horrified, the lady said, “Shhhh!! No, I asked her if she was from Fez!” Fez. Besides being a cone-shaped, flat-topped hat made of felt (click here for photo), it’s also a city in Morocco (click here for photos)!
In my defense, Es-tu de Fez? (Are you from Fez?) sounds very similar to As-tu deux fesses? (Do you have two butt-cheeks?) Also, I had been forced to read and discuss François Voltaire’s “Candide” as part of an undergraduate course on the Age of Enlightenment, and one of the characters from that, erm, 1759 literary masterpiece, has only one butt cheek. So there!
No comments:
Post a Comment