Dumb Danish Dane

For some reason, I have always been so damn lucky as to be honoured in meeting people who just are weirdos of the world. One of these incidents presented itself recently where a complete stranger, approached me through a friend, whom she would have just met 15 minutes earlier. In truth, she actually had a small conversation with me in English before she asked Uncle Schuurhof to approach me on what she wanted.

Uncle Schuurhof, on the other hand, had already explained to me earlier on her request and I got all that message in a blink of an eye. I was thinking of how to reply “NO” to her nicely when this blonde Danish girl butted in and in that few moments, managed to offend me by starting with, “ Dooo…yoouuuuu…speaaaakkkk…Eeengglisshhhhh….?” Perhaps, she didn’t mean it but the tone was pretty damn condescending! The way she stretched her words so very slowly and speaking to me like I’m some retard who could not understand or string any English words together, peeved me a little. Is it because I looked Asian and all Asians can’t understand or speak English?

So, I do what I do best - be annoying and acted like the idiot she may have assumed in her mind. Armed with a well-enunciated and grammatically correct usage of the language, I actually replied in English with , "No, I'm so sorry. I do not speak English". I then gave a wide-eyed grin to Silver Bullet who was next to me and then turn to her with my ultimate dumb look and blankest stare I could conjur up while she spoke to me. All this while, Uncle Schuurhof was telling Dumb Danish Dane that I’m from Singapore and my command of English was probably better than both of them combined! She doesn’t seem to get it and proceeded to ask if I could speak Spanish. She went on and on, in what I thought was a halting and half-witted Spanish, about wanting to borrow my sweater and as a collateral, offered me her bottle of shampoo of some sort. She continued blabbering about her hair and how she could not live without her shampoo; and that she’d willingly give up her 25 ml shampoo for my sweater. By now, I couldn’t keep a straight face anymore and burst out laughing so hard that I began rolling on the ground. Think she got offended and while I was laughing my ass off on the floor, she had walked away from us and never to be seen again for the rest of the night. I know it seemed mean, but I really could not help it!

I admit I don’t want to lend her my sweater and I could have been more gracious about it. It need not have happened that way for her too - had she not sounded so presumptiously patronizing. And really…NO I don’t want my favourite sweater on some strange, stinky angmoh’s body and have it returned to me all filthy later (or if returned at all!). NO, Singaporean is not equal to Spanish and this Singaporean most unfortunately, neither speak nor understand Spanish. And NO, I do not care for your shampoo and whatever the hell it does to your hair in exchange for my sweater. What an insult to a sweater!

What a moron. The term “Dumb Blonde” holds true!