The Universal Language of WTF

The Coto Supermarket is a clusterfuck on the eve of Xmas Eve, when most Argentines will celebrate Santa's virginal birth, etc.  Most stores will likely close for the next day or two--Coto, closed Sundays, maybe won't reopen till Monday.  It's possible the chinos will forget the holiday or be forced by Yakuza loan sharks to stay open.  But in this city, you can't take chances.  If you do, you might end up eating spaghetti with olive oil for Xmas dinner.

With our baskets of veggies and bread and dairy (I plan to make chana masala and eggnog; Jess, apple stuffing and 7 Layer Salad), we took our place in the long, mad lines at the front of the packed store.  The store space, though, is too small to be a supermarket.  To wait in line, you have to leave a wide open space between yourself and the cashier to keep the main aisleway open.  As the woman in front of us began bagging her groceries and Jess was supposed to move up to the conveyor belt, a Franken-faced middle-aged woman dragged her protesting old mother up to the cashier, blocking us off.  The old woman knew they were cutting in line--we had several people behind us--but Frankenstein muttered something about how they were old so they should check out first.

In the U.S., I would tell her and the cashier that I was next and show her where the back of the line was.  But I'm not in the U.S., and I don't know all those words.  So I stood dumbly, watching Frankenstein take about 100 hours to load her and her mother's groceries onto the belt, then going off to find another item, then coming back to her massive mound of goods, as if that register were her own private cashier stand.  Behind us, two girls were equally appalled, spitting Spanish in sharp whispers.

"Hey, J," I said loudly to Jess.  "Could you ask that woman to please move more slowly?  It'd be great if she actually found a way to be slower right now."

Positive note on language barrier: you can be as rude as you want, and most likely no one will understand you.  The oozing-sarcasm tone, however, was understood.  At least by the girls behind us.  They both smirked.  Frankenstein refused eye contact to any of us.  As she finished and Jess began unloading her basket, an old man ambled up to the other register the same line fed into.  I saw the two girls pointing and muttering in disbelief.  Seeing the old man, I turned to them with exaggerated shock on my face, and we all shared a laugh about how goddamned insane it was that these old people kept pushing into queue without regard for line propriety.  They spoke no English, and I didn't understand their Spanish.  But for that moment were on the same side, just regular people, sharing the same thought balloon of "WTF?"

After that, I bought the tiny cake.  Tiramisu mousse cheesecake: another universal language.