Gimme Shelter column: Say what?

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to get from one end to the other without making too much of a fool of myself. My brother took his theory of life from a line in a pop song: “Sometimes I think that life is like a rodeo/the trick is to ride and make it to the bell.”

Jack’s way was much more enriching, even though getting on the back of a wild animal over and over is a guarantee that now and then you’ll wind up on your rear end in front of a staring crowd. But when you get past the bell in one piece, you’ve lived decades longer than the fan in the stands.

I’ve been thinking about him lately. But then, I think about him all the time now that he’s gone.

Before he traveled, Jack learned the language of the country and studied the history and a fair amount of the literature. Amazingly, this didn’t take him a long time. Graced with the mother tongue of the destination and some knowledge, he was the opposite of a tourist; he was a distinguished visitor, an honored guest, a person with soul. But this also, like the bull rider, occasionally put him on his posterior.

We were hiking in the mountains of northern Greece. It was a cold, wet November afternoon, night was falling, and we didn’t have a tent or a sleeping bag. We were more lost than lost. Suddenly, in the last light of day we came upon a figure found only in fairy tales; a woodchopper, ax over his shoulder, sauntering up the trail toward us. Salvation.

His name was Adonis, and being Greek, he embraced us and gave us a shot of clear home brew from a bottle. As the Grecian jet fuel flamed straight through me, singeing me to my toenails, Jack and Adonis spoke happily in Greek. At a fork in the trail, Adonis pointed us in the right direction. More hugs. More annunciations of thanks and happiness from my brother.

Looking back we saw Adonis still there waving. Jack lifted his arms over his head and shouted something joyful. Adonis looked quizzical, and cupped his ear. Jack again, even more forcefully, screamed the phrase as loudly as he could. Adonis stared, puzzled, confused, and then suddenly sad.

That night my brother started laughing. He realized what he had been yelling his head off about so sincerely and meaningfully to our savior. He had confused the Greek words for “luck” and “cheese,” and so had been earnestly wishing Adonis, along with his family and heirs, the best of cheese forever.

Then, a day later in an open boat, Jack fell into conversation with a man. The man asked Jack if he had children. Jack said yes. Their ages? Not too sure of numbers in Greek, Jack, meaning to say they were not small anymore, mistakenly kept saying with a smile that all his children, girls included, were in fact, “Giants.”

The man moved to the bow of the boat where he consulted with a friend, looking over at us and performing the universal gesture of the index finger pointed at the temple twirling in a circle.

In Chiapas, we hiked into the rain forest to see Mayan ruins. One day Jack, for reasons of his own, was dressed completely in white (Jack of Chiapas, I suppose) and was having a particularly tough hike. He’d taken a header into a thorn bush and fallen off a ridge into a muck pool. Later, we stumbled into a village. Across the road was an Indian solemnly standing behind a table displaying small wooden carvings.

Jack approached him and admired a small carved lizard. “Does he live around here?” Jack asked in Spanish, pointing at the carving. But what he actually said in Spanish was: “Do I live around here?”

The Indian smiled. But Jack was insistent as ever, demanding to know if he, Jack, lived around here. The Indian, staring at this sweat-streaked gringo, his clothes bloody and muddy and foul smelling, finally said, terror in his eyes, waving his arms, “No, senor! No, senor!”

There’s a family somewhere in Austria who will testify that Americans are beasts of the field all because my brother once again got something terribly wrong.

Jack was working in the Austrian office of an American company and had struck up a friendship with Hans, an executive with the firm. Hans helped Jack with his German and Jack was tutoring Hans in English.

One Saturday night Jack was invited over for dinner to meet the family. Hans proudly introduced his wife, a demure hausfrau, and two exceedingly well-behaved children, a boy and a girl. Hans got Jack a drink and they all settled in the living room. Jack asked if they could speak in German so he could learn quicker and Hans agreed.

Silence fell on the room. Searching for something to say, Jack noticed that Hans had very large feet and, not knowing the plural of foot, asked in German what the size of his foot actually was. Hans looked stricken. Ms. Hans’ jaw dropped and stayed dropped.

Jack said again, in German, “Really, Hans, how big is your foot?” The boy giggled and Ms. Hans ran her children from the room, cuffing her son on the ear. Jack was shown the door with no explanation.

Of course, he hadn’t realized that foot and a slang expression for a part of the male anatomy were similar, and he had been inquiring very soberly of his colleague in the living room in front of his family … well.

We laughed whenever shoe sizes were mentioned.

In my heart, I hold precious the times when we would part. We’d embrace each other, and wish each other good cheese.