I hate the spanish language sometimes.
I was talking to my mom yesterday, and she offhandedly commented that my grandmother was in the hospital, where she has just had a leg amputated because of some sort of explosion—then she said she had to go and hung up.
The rest of the evening, while trying to call my family and getting only voicemail, I imagined some sort of apocalyptic blast that ripped up the streets and left my grandmother, who has a 4-story house full of stairs, sans leg. Looking up airfare to Colombia and imagining having to possibly live with her and perform some sort of noble, miserable sacrifice and give up my life here to make sure she was comfortable, I waited and hoped for some clarification.
Around 9, I was able to talk to my mother and she said that her phone was really crappy, it was giving her a bad connection. What she *meant* was that my 98-year-old grandfather had all of the veins in his leg implode and needed to have a leg removed. While that still totally blows and makes me sad, the poor enunciation of just a couple of vowels turned it into something way more epic and nearly gave me a goddamn heart attack. No wonder we never won a war; our communication sucks ass.Â
