Small Appliances.

When alone with a stranger in the United States, the commonly employed silence-killing device is talking about the weather. There is always weather. And everybody has an opinion (even not having an opinion counts as an opinion. In fact, that kind of apathy may be even MORE interesting, when the goal is to kill time). When I am in Argentina, my attempts to talk about the weather are futile.

In per-chance interactions, there are two common topics:
1) What I think of the women in the country
and
2) I forget the other one.

People are always trying to ask me what I think of the women in Argentina. Well, I tell them (and honestly), that they've got some darn fine women here. In as many words. In this vein, today I had an especially peculiar and interesting interaction:

I needed to buy a fan, because it is damn hot. (And let us NOT deny that the weather affects our moods, our small-talk, and our consumerism of small medium and large appliances). Also, my bedroom is directly next to the sidewalk (I commonly receive pizza and ice cream delivery through my bedroom window), which makes for a very noisy night if I keep my window open, and fans are as good for white noise as they are for moving air around.

So I went to my neighborhood small electronics store, two blocks from my house. The store was about 10 feet by 8 feet and packed with stuff, like most niche stores in the neighborhood (and those are the only kind of store. plastic thing store, for instance. Or womens undergarment store). I navigated through boxes of floodlights and ducked under some low hanging display chandeliers on my way to the counter, where the store owner was chatting with an old woman.

I should say, he was looking at an old woman, and she was talking towards him. This woman was what many would call - endearingly - a real piece of work. She is definitely somebody's favorite grandma. Appearing about 75, clunky white shoes matching her short cropped white hair and fake pearl necklace. White polka dots held it together over her blue dress. Herself and her grandmotherly paunch held court in the electronics shop, and I have no doubt the stool she was sitting on was well molded to her presumably equally grandmotherly behind. She held a red leash granting a mere six or seven feet of slack to a small white scotty dog who licked my toes intermittently throughout the purchase of my fan. The store owner, in classic small-appliance mold, had an easy smile, a receding hairline and a red beard. He would give his (totally unbuttoned) polo shirt a little tuck-in every time he came out from behind the counter.

I interrupted kindly to let the owner know I was looking for a fan. The old woman, we'll call her Myrna, quickly answered, to let me know just which fan I should get. Of the two fans in the store.

Unfortunately, Myrna's preferred fan was twice the price of the other one. I have to admit, her choice fan sure was a beaut, standing clear as tall as Myrna herself, and just as white. A lot more active even. "You don't have to set this one on a chair!" she said. "just sit there and have lunch and it blows right on you. No trouble at all."
"Well, I don't know," I said to the store-owner.
"I really think you should go with this one here," Myrna answered back, pointing at the oscillating free-standing fan, her finger energetically rotating like the fan (or was she shaking?). "It's great for when you are sleeping, too."
I asked the man to show me the cheaper fan.

Just then, a bald fellow with a striped polo shirt sauntered in, and as he too ducked under the chandelier, the store owner said "what do you say, Pancho?"

I was not sure if he was calling me Pancho, or if this man was Pancho. (A hotdog here is called a Pancho. A really long hotdog a "SuperPancho"). I made an non-committal noise.

"Todo bien," said Pancho.

"You know," said Myrna to Pancho, and pointed to the store owner, who was plugging my fan in, "he used to be quite smitten with my daughter."

brief silence.

". . . but that girl he's dating now is really pretty."

The store owner smiled and flipped my fan on.

"How is the air, Pancho?" he asked, as Pancho was standing directly in fan range.

"Feels good from here," Pancho replied.

I paused to think a minute, and the store owner made a great stab at a pun.

"El tema es el peso, o los Pesos, eh? el peso o los pesos?" (is your issue the weight, or the cost, but weight and cost are essentially the same word here). I told him it was the pesos, and he nodded understandingly. Myrna didn't have a comeback, but Scotty began licking my other foot.

“I´ll take the cheap one,” I told him.

As the store owner was packing my fan into the box, he asked me where I was from. I suppose I could have referred to my Harbor Springs basketball shirt, but I thought “United States” would probably suffice. He inquired when I was to return, and:

“what if you fall in love with an Argentine. What then?” he suggested as he and Myrna smiled.

“Well,” I reflected, “Love matters more than anything.”

And there, the store owner, Myrna, the Scotty dog, and I each pursed our lips and silently nodded, amongst the electrical coils and designer light fixtures.

Pancho was on his way out the door. Some kinda weather out there.