Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Charades-the universal language

I wish my dad was a blogger. You would get a kick out of his stories! He is the best story teller, especially humourous ones, of anyone that I know. Anyway this story was told to me by my mom, but seeing as how it happened to my dad I could just hear how he would tell it.....

It seems my parents have a new family that moved in across the street. They have not had a chance to "officially" meet them but have waved occasionally. They are from Korea. It is the parents, some children and an older mom or maybe aunt that live there. Both parents apparently work and the grandmother (aunt?) stay with the kids. Apparently this older woman was outside and saw my dad and waved for him to come over. She does not speak english. She motioned to her porch light, which was not lit, then motioned to the neighbors light, who's was lit. My dad understood that her light was not working. After looking into it he got it fixed for her and she was very grateful. A couple days later she was out raking her leaves and saw my dad again. She had seen him before raking his leaves and liked his rake much better. Hers was not doing a very good job. So she, using only hand motions, asked to 'rent' my dad's rake. She was very insistent that she rent it and not just borrow it. I think she offered $2. Then she continued. She acted like she was raking then sleeping then raking again. My dad finally realized she wanted to keep it for an extended time because she had a large back yard. I think this is so cute! Come to find out my dad had to go to Home Depot and he bought her a new rake - just like his. I haven't heard yet how she accepted that. Many of us have neighbors that do speak english and have lived next door to them for years and never spoken. But this exchange has made a friendship that I think added something to each of their lives.

I lived in Korea for a year while I was in the service and communicated like this quite often. I will never forget going out fishing in a local stream. We had poles and all the tackle we needed. I'm not sure where we got our bait but I think we just dug up some worms. We were out there for a couple hours without a bite. We finally gave up and started walking down stream. We came across an older man fishing who was catching fish left and right! We showed him that we had nothing. He looked to see what we were fishing with. He laughed at our worms, then showed us his bait. He was using maggots. Ugh! But he offered some to us and we gave it a try and sure enough started catching some. He was very pleased with himself. We thanked him by giving him some of our American beverage - a few beers. He was THRILLED!

Body language - The Universal Language ~~~isn't it great!

6 comments:

Cheryl said...

This reminds me of my neighbors, who I've been thinking of writing about. They're Korean, and our condos share a landing. Mom & Dad are almost never home, and Grandma's there with the baby and 3-yr-old all the time. She doesn't speak English, but lights up when Sweetie Pie and I come around because we always "talk" anyway.

DBFrank said...

*waves* Hello!

Pirate said...

Great story. Thanks. I was talking to a recent immigrant from Korea last night and it was a lot of charades.

Anonymous said...

Loved this post! =o)

As I sat and read I thought about all the stories I've heard through the years from my parents and grandparents. If only my parents and family would blog!! (they just DON'T get it...lol)

But IF they did, I sure would love reading even more so!

Live, Love, Laugh said...

That is so cool. It's funny how we can communicate with someone who doesn't speak our language and yet we fail to communicate with our neighbors who do.

I remember going to Russia and communicating with hand gestures. This post brought back alot of memories.

wanda said...

I think you inherited your dad's storytelling ability. Those are both such sweet stories.

I really like your blog.