I had gone from Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida and was sitting at a table in a rather large restaurant. A long line of people was waiting to get into the restaurant, but the people had been stopped from entering for some reason. Suddenly the gate was opened and the people streamed in.

Some girls were dancing on the dance floor in the restaurant and I began thinking I might like to dance with one.

A young man sitting to my right had ordered himself a beefsteak. Another man walked up and sat down with him and it appeared they had a luncheon date. When the second man sat down, I thought he looked as if he were from someplace like Sweden. After the second fellow had seated himself, he said, "Al menos podemos hablar espanol."

I thought that he probably didn't speak English, but that he could speak a little Spanish. But he didn't speak Spanish well. The first fellow however spoke Spanish well. The second fellow then asked, "Cuando vas a volver a Ohio?"

The first fellow said, "Hoy."

Apparently the first fellow was from Ohio. I thought about asking him something, but I didn't. Instead I rose and walked outside. I was carrying a brown paper bag filled with something. I wanted to return to Puerto Rico and I needed to catch a bus to the airport. But I didn't know which bus to take. I walked a couple blocks down the street to a place where I knew there was a bus stop. I walked up to a man standing there and asked, "Sabes cual guagua debo tomar al aeropuerto?"

He stopped me and said, "You shouldn't say 'cual' when you're talking about a thing like that."

He then just walked away. I thought my grammar had been correct, but I pondered whether it would have been proper to have said, "Sabe 'que' guagua" instead of "'cual' guagua." I walked up to another man and asked him the same question. He answered in English and I suddenly thought, "I'm in Miami. I'm in Florida. I should be talking English and not Spanish."

I then decided to call Hidalia Velazquez (a Puerto Rican acquaintance) before I left and I used a nearby phone booth to call her from. She told me she had to give a talk at a drug addiction clinic at 10 o'clock that night. She asked me if I would like to go with her. She said she was taking another friend with her. She had been invited to give a speech. She asked me if they had those kind of things in the United States and I said sure. She asked me if I would like to go and I said I would like to.

Copyright 2004 by luciddreamer2k@gmail.com