the silver anniversary

my birthday month has commenced, and to illustrate my burgeoning maturity:

I have taken a job as a server to tie me over financially until I either get an Americorps position or give in and take this job my dad has lined up for me. I am now a server in training at Martini's Italian Restaurante. Everyday I, as every trainee has to, shadow a different position in the restaurante. So far I've bussed, served twice, and worked on the salad line in the kitchen. Most of the kitchen staff is from Latin America, mostly Guatemala or Mexico.

Thursday I am on the salad line with Fredrico and Pompu, or at least that's what I that he told me his name was and he has yet to correct me. During my two hour stint has a terribly slow salad maker, I flex my spanish skills and talk to Fredrico and Pompu. Fredrico responds to me to most and is quite possibly the tallest Mexican I've seen in several years. Congenial conversation ebbs in between my constant "Que?"' and "repita por favor" since they speak a notch above whispher and we are surrounded by industrial fridges, a dishwasher, and the general kitchen hub-bub.

Fredrico starts asking more questions: do I like video games, which ones?, do I like movies, do I like to dance? I think nothing of the last question and expound in great the dances i know (salsa, merengue, bachata) and my favorite musicians and then I start freaking out about the blue cheese that won't sprinkle on the salad I am making, it just goobs and oozes on my hand. Somewhere in between me giving table 52 a 3oz chunk of cheese and Pompu staring at me for making a scene over the cheese, Fredrico asks me to go dancing with him. No he asks "te gusta a baliar conmigo" "Do you want to go dancing with me?". So specific and to the point. I go, "Que". Immediately in my head i freak out. Freak out. There's no sound reason to the freak out, thats just what happens in my geared-up head. He repeats and suddenly I am deaf. completely and totally deaf to english or spanish for several more cycles of "que" until I am granted with an end. I feel my cheeks burning and the tops of my ears are red. I think that a mature woman of twenty five can say, "I don't know you well enough yet to go out with you" (while in my head continuing with "during the evening in a city that I don't know where you could easliy drug me, rape me and kill me". Then I would scold myself for letting my mother's constant paranoia finally sink its teeth into my consciousness.). No, i feign a sudden ignorance to spanish and all languages for that matter.

Later, as I finish up my salad shift and suddenly recover my language abilities enough to bid Pompu and Fredrico "Adios", I walk to my stepdad's car, that I was using since I am carless, replaying the whole scene. "Yeah, that's me the twenty five year old", I chide myself at the whole thing, Fredrico, the job, my stepdad's car.