Letters to Friends and Familiares #36: Culture Schlock-101

The first few months in Mexico proved to be mightily disconcerting. In so many ways, Mexicans acted with solicitude and courtesy. Women appreciated my closing the car door. Gentlemen would hold the office door open for me to spare the effort of using the identification card (here known as la credencial) to activate the sensor to unlock the door for me to open the door and for me to enter the building.

While such preter-techical activity saved me at most five seconds, the gesture mattered more. My Mexican counterparts in business, my novia (Angélica) and my few acquaintances displayed nothing but patience and courtesy with my mangled Spanish that sounded more like a phonetic fragmentation bomb.

At work, people included me in their parties and ‘chismes’ sessions of office gossip, which I usually avoided with diplomatic deftness, “Tengo que ir al baño” (i.e., “I gotta go to the can, man...”). Senior managers at the (one of twenty-seven) national science and engineering research centers where I serve made sure I had decent tasks that could conceivably help the institution.

And so I wondered what the HELL was wrong with me and why I kept getting mixed signals. Thanks to a fairly strict pair of parents, I had had the benefit of a solid upbringing – though four decades ago “upbraiding” was more contextually convincing – and so my manners and social instincts were fine, as evidenced by the warm and appreciative smiles coming my way from people of all walks of life in Querétaro.

Yet I kept slamming into mixed signals from these same otherwise delightfully authentic people. The first time I noticed was with the Human Resources liaison for the Peace Corps volunteers, an educated, glamorous and charming young lady. On a chilly December morning, we crossed paths and I said in Spanish my standard, “How are you?”, in the formal third person, being the polite prig that I am.

She said in her spritely way, “Just fine. Thank you. Good-bye!” I did not show my rather startled reaction and simply let this eerie cross-current swirl right on by.
This type of thing occurred repeatedly and I became increasingly unsure of my communications skills.

Yet everyone remained so forthrightly friendly in every other respect that I figured that acceptance of something beyond me would be the most constructive course. Then in March, I got worried. At eight o’clock in the morning, I ran into the man who tracks the schedules of the busses as they go by and asked how he was. He said, “Great! Thank you. Good-bye!”

Well I had been through this enough to know to let it go. Then at the entrance and the guard booth, I asked how the guards were. In unison they bellowed, “Fine, thank you, goodbye!” Now I was really worried. Next along came my Department Head and, upon the usual courtly exchange, he answered, “Well, thank you. Good-bye!”

When the administrative manager of the office – a woman of noble mien – said the same mixed message, that did it: I was officially unnerved. There must be something wrong with me. At ten-thirty in the morning, I ran across the street to the farmacía where I bought some deodorant, though I remember applying the ‘Old Spice Original’ just hours before, and some mints for my breath.

Of course, these Mexicans were being indirect and I had to do something about it. I called Angélica and asked her how she was hurriedly. She said in Spanish, “Happy to hear your voice. Thank you. Good-bye!” Since Angélica is fluent in English, I blurted out in my native tongue, “Don’t hang up until you explain something to me…” She protested that she had no intention of hanging up and asked me what was the matter.

Confusion nagged my every nerve. How could I smell bad or look worse over the telephone? So I asked in English, “What is with this business of saying, “I am fine. Thank you. Goodbye…”? That woman of my dreams had the temerity to laugh and laugh heartily. Crestfallen, I braced myself for her answer.

“Ned, we are saying ‘Bien. Gracias a Dios’ like thank God, not Gracias. Adios…” That’s culture shock for you, now isn’t it?