Most who know me know that I am not an aggressive person. I tend to be fairly laid back and I avoid confrontation like the plague. Arguments and fights make me very uncomfortable and if I can feel something “brewing” between people I go into diplomat-mode trying to smooth things over to avoid any unnecessary hostility. When I took one of those personality tests at a previous job, my primary descriptor was “Harmonizer”. I’m sure my catch phrase should be “Why can’t we all just get along??”

BUT…there have been times, on occasion, where I can’t keep it inside and I have to say or do something to stand up for myself. It usually happens when I feel like someone is trying to take advantage of me or someone close to me and I just can’t let it go. I must say, the most entertaining situations happen when I’m overseas and when there’s a language barrier between me and the offending person. I just have to get my point across, and when I don’t have the words to express myself, I have to get creative.

It was at the start of my Round the World trip and my second day in China when I had to go to the main train station in Beijing to buy a ticket to Hong Kong. I was with my two travel partners and like good Americans, we waited in line for our turn at the ticket window. But just as we got to the front, an older Chinese lady who at most came up to my elbow, stepped right in front of us to cut the line. Now I am a fairly tall black woman, but she wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. Having no idea what to say to her, I ended up just giving her the stink-eye hoping she’d get the message and apologize before moving to the back of the line, but that had no effect whatsoever. She never even turned around to look at me. I didn’t stand a chance.

About seven months later and at the end of the same Round the World trip, I found myself in the exact same situation but this time in Luxor, Egypt. It was the same scenario: had to buy a train ticket, waited patiently in line, little old pint-sized lady cut me off. Well, if I learned nothing else in my months on the road, I learned that a stern look would not get me anywhere. Still I couldn’t really argue with her in any language she could understand, so I had to get creative. I had learned a few hand gestures while in Egypt that I thought might get the point across, so I turned my palm up towards the sky, brought my fingers together and shook it at her. I was pretty sure that meant “Wait”, but in my head it also meant “what the hell are you doing cutting in front of me”?? Well, I guess I must have surprised her because she tried to argue with me, I kept giving her the wait sign and eventually she moved back in line. Still no common language, but I managed to get the point across.

A few years later I found myself living in Brasil for three months to study Portuguese and train Capoeira. As is always recommend for faster language acquisition, I found myself a Brazilian boyfriend. For the most part we got along well, but there were a few times where we definitely did not see eye to eye. My Portuguese was decent enough that I could usually get myself into an argument fairly easily, but getting back out usually involved me running to the Portuguese-English dictionary, flipping aggressively through the pages, double checking the word definition, making sure I got the right pronunciation then yelling that out loud. The whole time my boyfriend sat there (probably laughing hysterically inside) waiting for me to find the right word. By the time I found the word he’d probably forgotten what the heck I was angry about in the first place. Ugh!

But sometimes the dictionary just wouldn’t do the trick. Instead I’d have to pull a “Ricky Ricardo” and just start going off on an angry rant in my native tongue. Logically I knew that this guy didn’t understand a single word of English, so all of my well delivered arguments were a complete waste of time. Still, by the end of it I felt much better and I had usually confused him to the point when he had no choice but to just give in. Victory! And then I could go back to being my calm, non-confrontational self. Aaaah. What about you? Any funny stories about having to get a point across when there’s a language barrier? Please share!