“La regle.”
That’s all he said to me. Taco will sometimes come up to my house and say the word of whatever it is he needs. So he came to the house at 7:30 in the morning and said “la regle” – - ruler. I just said “what?” Then he repeated his command.
“The ruler what?”
“I need it”
“What do you need”
“ruler”
“what?”
“ruler”
“ruler what?”
“ruler”
At the end of it, I told him I didn’t understand what he wanted, and that he should leave and learn how to ask for things before he comes back.
Now, he needed the ruler for school that particular day, so he was probably worse off because I didn’t give him the ruler that I never use and probably never will. In fact it’s sitting under a pile of dust in one of the bedrooms, being dry season and dust being everywhere.
But I want to teach him that there is a proper way to ask for things, and if he were to show up at some company and say “job” or “money” he might not get the response he was asking for.
March 18, 2009 at 6:58 pm
This has happened to me while working with low educated people that do not speak the language well. They unfortunatelly don’t know better and although, you are right about the lesson you wanted him to learn, it will not be understood if you simply sent him home without an explanation… I hope you did.