Jirkisms

As alluded to in prior writings, Yurka(sic) is a consistent source of entertainment for his combined near-fluency in the English language, but complete unfamiliarity with common colloquialisms. I have decided to compile, as best I can, a series of “Jirkisms” for the enjoyment of friends, families, and bored readers at home. There is a certain sense of spontaneity and “you-had-to-be-there” which accompanies all of these, I understand, but at the very least, they will be recorded for Jodie’s and my own posterity, if for no one else’s.

I have already relayed the story of Jirka declaring that he was “tea-bagging” a four-year-old child by dipping him in the ocean off of his sailboat (the Sea Gypsy).

I have also recounted Jirka’s request to a female patient for an “oral favor.”

Those, and the following, have all been relayed to me by a panel of storytellers consisting of Jirka himself, Vivi, and Mihnea (Meek-na – don’t ask me where the ‘k’ thinks it’s doing there), the local vet and a kindly gent, though most require some exposition beforehand. Mihnea, I might add, is of Romanian descent, and recently has added some gems of his own.

Jirka had apparently attracted the fancy of a homosexual gentleman some time ago, who went out of his way to talk to Jirka for hours on end. Jirka liked the guy okay, but, of course, was uninterested in the man’s affections, but never seemed to be able to properly convey this in a way he deemed diplomatically-appropriate. On the day of a local dog show, the man, who owned a poodle, arrived and, naturally, found Jirka amidst the crowd. Jirka, in his usual jovial and friendly manner, inquired if he was going to enter his dog in the competition.

No, he said… well, maybe. He wasn’t sure. Why?

He could win some prizes, Jirka explained. Including a very special top prize!

Interest piqued, he seemed to reconsider – what, he asked, was the ‘special prize?’

Why, nothing other than a one night stand at Palau Pacific Resort!

A moment of awkward silence and a look of startled shock followed – the man had apparently never picked up on Jirka’s less-than-perfect mastery of the English language, and took offense to his suggestion (and the competition’s choice of prize!)

Realizing that he had somehow offended him, Jirka sought to explain further, to allay the man’s apparent concern: “With your dog!”

            What a hilarious misunderstanding.

            Another time, at a restaurant, Jirka had apparently taken ill, and announced loudly to the women he was with “I feel like poking!”

            An Australian man was extremely disquieted when Jirka suggested that they “mate” at a nearby harbor before sailing.

            Then there was Jirka’s insistence that he and Mihnea ‘service’ each other – when attempting to explain that they took turns serving the other beer.

            Tonight, at dinner, Jirka added to his ignominious reputation as we discussed our respective adventures of the day. I had gone diving with Keith (more on that later), Jodie had embarked on a journey worthy of Crusoe with Mihnea, and Jirka, Vivi, and Jirka’s two guests had gone on quite the overnight sailing adventure. In attempting to describe the way his sailboat skipped across the water at high-speed, Jirka proudly declared that “we were like rabbits on the boat!” Amidst howling laughter from Vivi (who assured us that, maybe HE had been, but SHE had not been) Jodie and myself (and a bit of a confused look from Mihnea, who didn’t get the joke, but understood that Jirka must have said something that had a different connotation in American English), Jirka thought he might rectify his mistake by changing his preposition: “I mean, not us, but like rabbits WITH the boat!”

            After we explained the connotation of describing a group of people as being “like rabbits,” he returned that he didn’t know about AMERICA, but in the Czech Republic, rabbits RUN. Apparently, in Czech, they have a similar expression to the American “like rabbits,” but they use squirrels. Granted, you can say someone “runs like a rabbit,” but no such specificity was given, and young minds being what they are…

            The laughter died down for about five minutes, until we all started discussing plans for a trip to Peleliu and Angaur and back via sailboat (Jodie and I will likely meet them on Angaur and sail back with them, since we’re taking the Ministry of Health boat to Peleliu on Thursday, as usual). Jirka floated the idea of just having the MOH boat tow them along, then, since his boat is running low on fuel, maybe just hooking up a line to their fuel tanks and “sucking them off.”

            Vivi, Jodie and I briefly exchanged glances, before bursting into laughter again. “So your plan is to suck them off?”

            “Yes, I would like to. Why?”

            Mihnea, then: “We could suck off the Ministry of Health.”

            Me: “Really? The whole Ministry?”

            Mihnea: “Yes, all of them!” (He meant the boats)

            Vivi: “Simultaneously?”

            Jirka: “We could just get a fuel line running out to each of them and coming back to us, and suck them off all at once!”

            As this conversation spiraled entirely out of control, Jirka and Mihnea picked up on what, exactly, we found so funny about their choice of words, and began intentionally fueling the fire by asking if we thought the Minister of Health would mind being sucked off, and it went on in such a fashion for about five minutes before the humor of the joke was, if you will pardon the expression, sucked dry. A latently erotic conversation followed discussing how Jirka’s lower unit (on his engine, mind) was broken and he needed to borrow some guy’s lower unit, but the guy’s mother had a working upper unit, and if they could combine units they could make things happen… And then Vivi offered to ‘beat’ someone up for Jirka, and Mihnea chimed in:

            Mihnea: “Can you beat someone off?”

            Vivi: “I… well, I mean, it… I said beat UP.”

            Mihnea: “Can you suck someone up?”

            Vivi: “I don’t want to suck her up!”

            Me: “Suck her up” isn’t really a phrase that’s used, but it’s similar enough to “suck off” that it could be seen as dirty…

            Jodie: “You can suck up TO someone…”

            Mihnea: “What does this mean, suck up to?”

            Me: “You know… kiss ass?”

            Mihnea: “Ah,” and offered a sage nod. Then, after a pause…

            Mihnea: “Can you suck someone DOWN?”

            Me: “Okay, maybe it’s time we all went to bed.”

            The night before, Jodie and I went sailing with Mihnea, Richard, and Rita (more about this, and them, later), and afterwards, we were discussing the day… and Mihnea commented that Richard kept saying they needed him on the boat for his “beef.” He thought that this was a way of calling him fat (albeit teasingly), so we explained that “beefy” meant muscular, big, not necessarily fat (which was “flab,” though he kept calling it “flat”). So, what they were saying was they needed a big, strong guy on one side of the boat for balance and to man the ropes, and it wasn’t even meant teasingly as an insult. I should note that, in general, Richard and Rita really like the term “beefy.” So, this naturally came up during dinner.

            Rita: “We really like having Mihnea on our boat because he’s beefy!”

            Mihnea: “You need me because you are flat!” He, of course, was teasing, and trying to say she was FLABBY. After a moment of laughter, we explained that he just told Rita she lacked tits. So, then, he tried to explain that he meant to say ‘slab.’ Patiently explaining what a ‘slab’ was, and reminding him that it was ‘flab,’ he had by then completely lost the joke, so in an attempt to recover, he declared that Rita likes Richard (her husband) for his beef.

            This, of course, had a wildly different connotation than saying they like Mihnea on the crew because he’s ‘beefy,’ and hilarity ensued.

            Perhaps my favorite part of Palau so far is how multi-national it is – there are almost as many American/Canadian/English/Australian/other native English speakers as Caucasian non-native English speakers, and so there is no shortage of linguistic comedy.

            I shall update the blog with further Jirkisms/Mihneaisms as they occur.