Language Barrier
A cute-ish guy approached me at a foreign film screening at my university in Arizona and asked me out in French, which was the language of the film. I spoke college-level French, so I accepted the offer of a date. I mean, he was kind of cute.
When he picked me up that Friday night, he greeted me with “Guten tag!” Okay, cute, a reference to the foreign film screening, right? Nope. From that moment on he spoke nothing but clumsy German all night long.
He took me to Blockbuster (I’m old) and we rented a German film. He spoke German to the cashier. He spoke German through dinner. He spoke German while watching the film.
He tried to get to first base in German. And yes, this whole time I was telling him repeatedly that I don’t speak German, I can’t understand him, etc. He just responded in German.
But the weirdest moment was when his roommate came home as I was awkwardly leaving (my date was trying to convince me to stay, in German) and my date interrupted our “conversation” to say in a perfectly normal Arizona accent, “Hey man, what’s up?”
And then turned back to me and continued to speak German. Oooooookaaaay.