lost in translation?

Had a rather unpleasant experience going home by bus this evening.

As I approached the bus stop I noticed a young mother (say around 30 max) and her son; the little boy looked just like my eldest nephew and it seemed that he was having a small fit. And it did appear that the mom felt rather embarrass that he was upset and making a lot of noise.
I personally tend to think that kids don’t need to ‘punished’ for expressing their feelings in public, they’re too young to understand anyways, and its not really ‘their fault’ that they ‘embarrass’ us (I think it stems more from our own ‘guilty feeling’ to society, its not really anything to blame the kid about). Yet then again, it’s a large dilemma for the parents I suppose. So I always try to look undisturbed or even give an ‘understanding smile’ if the kid is near me, as the situation is already tough enough. Well they were standing far away from me, so I didn’t really noticed them too much.

Then the bus came, and I when in to sit in the set of seats that face each other.
And turns out, they came and sat next to me. I had a number of bags with me, one was my laptop case. Now since the little boy sat in front of me, I thought I better ‘secure’ the laptop by placing it further from his small feet (that seemed like it was going to make a ‘kicking move’—it would be foolish not to avoid possible damage and expect you can blame someone else for your loss, there’s no such thing as being too careful ;). Then all of a sudden the little boy moved and sat right next to me. And the mom with all her effort to calm the boy down, told him (I think, cause it was in French, but from the gesture I could understand) that he better behave and not move too much, cause he will disturb me.
So in reflex I told the mother (in English) not to worry, and that I understand how little kids can be, that I too have a nephew his age.
And to my surprise, she seemed upset and asked me ‘Don’t you speak French?!”
So I said ‘No, I don’t. I was just saying that he reminds me of my nephew’ (I was a bit surprised with her reaction and didn’t really know what else to say to her, and tried hard to think what ‘nephew’ was in French. I was this close to tell her he reminds me of my son :P just to ‘save’ my self).
Then I was more surprised when she said in a really harsh tone, ‘I don’t speak English, I don’t know what you are saying!’ with a gesture like being very offended.
So I just kept quiet and remembered how awkward it must be for her as well, as she might expect my ‘english’ telling her that ‘I’m disturbed, can’t your son behave?’

Somehow her reaction to me really made me sad. It was a bit weird actually. I wasn’t upset at all with her. But just really really sad. And missed my nephew so so much.
Seriously, that last 5 minutes on the bus waiting for it to approach my apartment was the worst trip I ever had. I went home feeling really down and puzzled.

Then re-thinking the situation again, I guess it was very likely that she didn’t mean to be rude, just that her intonation in using English (a language that I can understand, which makes one also very easy to ‘misunderstand’ when used in different ways) made me ‘understand’ her differently, and making the situation (to me) appear really weird.

So then I wondered how she understood the situation...

Yeah, talk about culture shock. Geez...

-moenlite-
[feeling much better after dinner and one long phone call :)]