Time To Laugh- From Vicky

Ok friends, time for another funny story! I can't even tell you how excited I get when I receive a new story because they always crack me up! If you're interested in sending one in you can e-mail me at jamielb_03@hotmail.com. I post about one a week or so or two or three or something. Click the picture to see the rest!

      

This story comes from Vicky. Her new blog The Soapboxers is so funny and really makes you think. She writes about the little things that get you fired up and make you want to get on your soapbox sometimes! 

The place: Tokyo

The setting: A local convenience store 

My friend and I are very thirsty.  We've been walking through Tokyo all day, and I mean alllll day, trying to find the Tokyo tower- a tourist spot similar to the Eiffel Tower.  I have a hankering for apple tea.  It's a yummy cold beverage which will hopefully be available in America one of these days.  Anyway, we go into this store, head back to the drink refrigerator and search for it.  It's not there.  Well, I don't see it anyway.  Maybe I just can't find it because I can't read the cans, I think to myself.  I want to ask the clerk if they carry it, but he's Japanese.  How can I help him to understand what I'm saying?  In my head, I'm rolling my fingers on a desk in a rhythmic pattern- it's my symbol for thinking.  I look around and spot a pack of apple flavored candy, and it just so happens that it has a picture of an apple on it. What luck! I can show him the apple and he'll know what I'm talking about! Perfect. So I pick it up, walk over to the clerk show him the pack of candy and ask, while pointing to the picture on the candy and in a slow-like-he's-dumb voice, "Dooo yoouuu haaavve aapplle teeeaaa?".  He gives me this look like he doesn't understand.  Or that I'm crazy, I'm not sure which.  I ask again, a little faster this time.  "Doo youu haave apple teeaa?".  "You mean apple tea?", he asks.  Oh my gosh!  My plan worked!  I am so smart!  "Yes!", I say excitedly.  "No, we don't have apple tea", he informs me, still looking at me like I'm crazy.  Bummer.  But oh well, I just communicated with a Japanese person. And I don't even know Japanese.  I am so proud of myself.

My friend and I keep walking. It's twenty minutes later and something occurs to me.  I turn to my friend and ask "Wait.  Did that clerk speak English to me?"  She laughs, because she, of course, was behind me in the store- very silent.  "Yep". The crazy looks he gave me must've been more like "What a stupid American!" looks.  I was the stereotypical stupid American. I am still mortified to this day, five years later.