The Key to the English Language

This story has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I just thought of it the other day and it made me laugh.

Over the summer, I worked as a banquet server at a fancy hotel. The staff who worked there were incredibly diverse. In fact, most of the other servers with whom I worked were from a foreign country, and I was the minority more often than not.

While I worked in Sun Valley for a week at a special conference, I met a boy from Turkey. He was friendly, fashionable, and even a little feminine, but we quickly became friends. We’ll call him Mehmed.

Mehmed was short, had darker skin, and wore square-ish glasses. He was just a few years older than me, and he was trying to learn English. He was actually pretty good and could communicate just about anything he wanted, but all with an endearing Turkish accent. He would often swing by wherever I was working and in his sing-song voice say something like, “Hallo, yewlee [Julie], haw are eyew today?”

Then we would stand at the counter in some back hallway and fold stacks of pink napkins together while he would tell me about Turkey and teach me how to count to ten in Turkish. One time he did me a favor and I said, “Thanks, Mehmed. I really appreciate it.”

He looked at me blankly and said, “Whad is appreciate?”

“Um…” how do you explain that? “Well, it’s like being grateful, you know? It’s like saying, ‘I’m thankful you did that. It means a lot.’ Something like that.”

“Why do not you just say that then?”

Good question.

Just then another server came by. She was a petite brunette with big brown eyes and a quick step. “Mehmed,” she said, “we need to take this cart to the banquet room. Here, you take that end.” Mehmed, always willing, jumped up from the table and grabbed the handle of the cart.

“Okay, push that," she said.

“Okay.” He stood at the ready with a big smile.

The girl pulled the other end but the cart didn’t budge. She turned around to face him, “Mehmed, do you know what ‘push’ is?

“No.” He grinned.

She sighed, exasperated. “Here, like this,” and then she yanked the cart. “Oh, okay!” he said, and they were off.

A few hours later, I was hand-polishing a mountain of silverware with another server named Derek. Suddenly, Mehmed came bounding by. “Guys!” he proclaimed, clearly pleased with himself, “I just learned new word!” I looked at Derek. This was gonna be good.

“Oh really?” I said, “and what word is that?”

He leaned in close and threw his hands in the air, “I learned ‘doot.’”

Derek and I looked at each other, puzzled. “Doot?”

“Yes!” he said, beaming. “What’s up, doot!?”

And that was that. In one word, Mehmed had just mastered the English language.