under the table
2006-01-08||12:58 p.m.
Yesterday when I was sitting in a booth eating my breakfast there were two guys having a really loud conversation in what I'm pretty sure was Chinese in the booth behind me. The one guy was teaching the other one how to say certain words in English. The first word was "illegal." I thought about it, and you know, 'illegal' would be a really hard word to say when learning English. They kept repeating it back and forth until the second guy got it kind of close to correct. Then they chattered for a while and then started the back and forth thing again, this time with the word "payroll." I said 'payroll' in my head back and forth with them. If 'illegal' was a hard word, 'payroll' was impossible. Think about it: for a person who switches their L's and R's, 'payroll' comes out something like "paylor." Ouch. It didn't even occur to me to put those two words together until I was waiting for the bus to go downtown about an hour later. 'Illegal payroll.' Damn, I really wish I knew what the rest of the conversation was.
Calvin & Hobbes