Looking Out: What's popping between cultures, guests

Way back when my beloved wife, Marsha, and I were very young and just starting our wonderful married life, we had a little gathering with our next-door neighbors in our tiny apartment.

We had no money, so we served water and popcorn. A wedding gift, our popcorn popper was a dandy thing. It was a wok-shaped bowl with a heating element in the base. We’d dump a little oil in there, add some popcorn kernels, put the clear plastic cover on and delight in the sound, smell and sight of popcorn popping.

Our guests were from Paraguay and spoke no English. My rudimentary skills in speaking and understanding Spanish relied heavily on saying mas despacio (SLOWER!) over and over and clinging tightly to a well-worn English-Spanish dictionary.

We had managed to build a friendship mostly without the use of language. This particular evening, however, required more than pointing, gesturing, making faces and guessing at Spanish words.

You see, our guests had never seen popcorn being popped before. They had only purchased already-popped popcorn in Paraguay. They could not believe their eyes when I made that first batch. They wanted to know why a corn kernel would suddenly explode into a piece of popcorn.

I wore out several pages of that dictionary trying to explain that water expanded 1,600 times when turned to steam, and how the molecular structure of the inside of a corn seed would be converted to a different form, etc. etc., etc.

More recently, we’ve shared some pleasant evenings with a wonderful Brazilian woman named Maria who speaks no English. We speak no Portuguese. Maria radiates warmth, kindness and bakes fine desserts. Who needs to converse when there is a great dessert on the table?

When I was in ninth grade, our family hosted a wonderful exchange student from Germany. He was an exceptionally bright guy who later became a college professor.

Oddly, he had made the decision before arriving at our home to become as American as possible during his stay, so his European-style haircut, clothing, and glasses disappeared. He, like many young Europeans of that era, had a fascination with the American West, and particularly the cowboy life they saw in movies.

By the time he flew back to Germany after a year, his English was perfect and nearly unaccented. He was wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.

He told me later that he was seated on the airplane next to two attractive German gals his own age. He told them, in English, that he was a wealthy cattle rancher from Texas, even though the closest he had been to Texas was Lake Michigan. It was a long flight and after each bit of conversation, the two lasses would huddle up, giggling, and in German compare notes about their handsome and wealthy young Texan cowboy seat companion. Competition to see which one would end up marrying him was part of the talk.

By this time, he was stuck in his lies and had to keep up the charade even though he understood every word of the girl-to-girl conversations.

As they got off the plane in Frankfurt, he put on his best version of a Texas drawl and began his farewells. Unfortunately and totally by coincidence, who should be standing there just outside the airplane but his brother who was preparing to fly somewhere himself.

The two brothers exchanged excited greetings after a year apart.

In German.

Two very red-faced girls slunk off through customs, leaving their fake Texas cowboy far, far behind.

— Jim Whitehouse lives in Albion.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Looking Out: What's popping between cultures, guests