Does Not Understand English!

My grandmother is quite fond of telling people that she doesn't understand English. If someone attempts to talk to her in English, she will smile and nod and then make some kind of a humorous retort in Chinese that she has absolutely no idea what that person is saying to her. Though she had spent quite a bit of time in California (not to mention that English is one of the primary languages spoken in Singapore), she will still maintain that she has no command whatsoever of the English language. In fact, she will really play this to the hilt whenever she comes to the US as a means of trying to get the Customs inspectors to wave her by (see "The Real Reason for Confiscation").

In fact, she had been so adamant about her not understanding a single word of English that my mom and I had pretty much believed her. On one of our trips back to Singapore several years ago, our whole family had gone out for a day of shopping. My mom and I started walking ahead of my grandmother and my aunt and uncle and had started teasing my grandmother in English.

"Make sure to really bargain your butt off with the shopkeeper if you're going to buy those things. Especially in front of grandma," my mom said.

"I know," I replied. "She's a bargaining machine. She gets so angry when she's bargaining to get the best deal it's absolutely scary! It's like the shopkeepers have to pay her to buy their items. I always get so embarrassed whenever she gets like that."

"I know," my mom said. "That's why we call her 'The Dragon Lady'." We started laughing rather hysterically.

"I heard that!" My grandmother yelled in Chinese from about five feet behind us. "I understood every single word you said!"

In disbelief, my mom and I asked her what we said. In verbatim, my grandmother recited (in Chinese, of course) everything we had said about her.

Needless to say, if you're going to talk about somebody in front of said somebody in another language, you better make damn sure that somebody REALLY doesn't know the language!