True New York City Moment

by philg

I was having dinner with a New York friend, her daughter, and two Argentine girls. The Argentines were talking about how they’d learned English and would casually use four-letter words in English back in Argentina. When they came to Miami they had to learn not to say “fuck” all the time. I said that it reminded me of one of my favorite movies, I Love You to Death, with Kevin Kline. It opens with him confessing to a priest and wondering whether cursing out his mother-in-law in a language she doesn’t understand counts as a sin (“it counts” is the priest’s response).

As we were leaving the restaurant, a familiar-looking guy walked in. My hostess introduced me. “This is Kevin Kline; he lives in the neighborhood.” We explained that we’d just been talking about I Love You to Death. He responded “It’s a true story, you know.”

2 thoughts on “True New York City Moment”

  1. Same thing happens in English. Seinfeld used to say Cojones in his TV show all the time. That is a as foul a word in Spanish (in some countries at least) as “fuck” is in the US.

  2. One of my ex-exgirlfriends just joined the facebook group, “I say “FUCK” all the time, and i’m STILL CLASSY”. When we dated ~10 years ago, she was ~20, and didn’t really swear at all.

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