Como se dice 'wash your freaking manos,' Jose?

All I did at work today, literally, was read about swine flu. Swine flu fever, baby, and not a dose of Tamiflu to cure me.

I hate swine flu. I am tired of swine flu. But something tells me that for the rest of the week, all I'm gonna be reading is news about swine flu.

That is, unless my friendship with Jose doesn't kill me first.




Jose is the cleaning guy at my office. He comes in between 6:15 and 6:45todos los días. It's funny that I'm able to read Spanish newspapers all day for my job, and yet am almost completely unable to carry on a conversation with Jose. But I try. Oh, do I try.

¿No has comido un cerdo hoy? I asked this afternoon when he and his wife Maria, also my friend despite a language barrier, pushed their plastic trash cans on wheels into my little annex in the corner of the office. I only know the word for "pig" because a Spanish teacher at my high school used to call my friend Nick Pigneri Cerdito, or "little pig." But "pig" is not "pork," meaning that's probably not the way you ask if someone has eaten pork today in Spanish. It'd probably be the equivalent of of the exchange student from "Can't Hardly Wait" asking, "Yes my friend, but you do not have ingested Animal Farm character Napoleon today, no?"

But Jose is from Mexico, and he doesn't live under a rock. So he understood what his good friend Bílly was asking.

"No, no," dijo Jose. (The word "no" is universal, and I am thankful for that.) "Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish." (Everything after "no," though, varies from language to language.)

It's at this point in nearly every conversation with Jose -- when he vollies back my opening serve with a stream of rapid, unintelligible Guanajuatan Spanish -- that I do my nod. (Nod, nod, smiling, nod). It's the one I do when pretending to know what Jose has just said, when in reality I have no idea. I just try and gauge his body language and tone of voice and go from there with what I try and say next, always trying to sound like a true vato, not some Gringo. At least I can roll my R's like a frrrrreaking champ.

So at this point in our daily tennis match over the net known as a nearly impenetrable language barrier, it's 30-15, me. The awkward question making light of the swine flu (15-love), followed by his backhand winner of Spanish-Spanish-Spanish (15-all), met with me feeling really good about myself for really hitting the sixth letter of gobierno like a Zeta on a shop owner that doesn't want to pay rent. Thirty-fifteen.

Then he worked me, game-set-match, as we tried to continue the conversation to a point beyond head nods and smiles. We (tried to) talk about swine flu, and his home in central Mexico, and the fact that Jose has three sons still living in Guanajuato, which I'd heard of once before, in a Robert Earl Keen song. I always liked the sound of that place. Won-uh-wato.

I wonder if Jose wonders what it's like there right now. All joking aside.

But since I'm a heartless bastard, we must return to joking, of course.

The entire time, I noticed that Jose had a runny nose. And that he was sniffling. Aaaand he was wiping his nose with his hand, which he probably had no intention of washing.

Which, ladies and gentleman, is the best way to spread swine flu.


¡Lava los manos, Jose!

That's what I yelled at him. He nodded and laughed. I wonder if he understood what I was saying.