Very little comedy in real-world slapstick

Slapstick is only comedy when it’s on television. Here are four examples of how sad real-life… Slapstick is only comedy when it’s on television. Here are four examples of how sad real-life slapstick is from my life here in Buenos Aires, Argentina:

1. I walked up the stairs out of the subway onto a hot and crowded sidewalk. A dude about my age broke from the current hurrying around me and asked, “Che, what time is it?” I looked at my cell phone, but couldn’t read the numbers for three seconds. Then, I couldn’t speak Spanish for three seconds. By the time he found out what time it was, his priorities changed. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Estados Unidos,” I said.

“Where are you going?”

“Barrio San Telmo.”

“What street?”

“Estados Unidos.”

I blushed. Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “Las calles de Buenos Aires, ya son mi entrana,” but I came all the way from Estados Unidos and out of all those calles the only one good enough was Estados Unidos. Typical.

The dude pointed down the block and said, “It’s over there. Let’s go.” I didn’t feel like walking with him, though, because he was drunk, so I got flustered and refused.

He thought for a second, then proposed, “Give me a dollar.” He could have asked me for 3.1 pesos, but this sunuvabitch had the nerve to demand a dollar. As if all I carry around are dollars. However, he might have harbored concerns about inflation.

I said, “No.” I guess he took it pretty hard, as I could see the disappointment in his eyes, and also he punched me in the face as hard as he could.

For three seconds I couldn’t speak Spanish or think at all. I realized all of a sudden that he was walking away and my fist was in the air about to punch him in the jaw.

But I breathed in and let it go. I thought about how his punch was an uppercut, and no one does uppercuts in real life. They are a video game move – Mortal Kombat I, to be precise. I thought about how he punched me in the cheekbone, and my cheekbones are like scissors. His knuckles are bruised.

2. Friday night a bus dropped me off three blocks from a salsa club. In that part of town, it turned out one of the blocks had a fence running along half of it, of which a one-foot section of the fence bottom was turned upward. It turned out one-half of a link of that warped part caught my pant leg mid-stride off the bus, tearing my pants knee to ankle. I looked homeless.

I’m not a snappy dresser, but I have standards. More importantly, the women of Argentina have the kind of standards that rule out dancing with homeless men. Our cultures converge on this point.

Where our cultures diverge, the United States has many stores open all the time that sell things you might need for easily imagined accidents and shortages.

Gas stations sell earplugs. Drugs stores sell Barbies. Wal-Mart sells shotguns.

However, the Argentines say just what they mean by, “This is a pharmacy,” even adding, “so we have no safety pins.”

“But you have nail clippers,” I pointed out, confident my logic will make safety pins appear.

“They are health products.”

I thought about how you can use safety pins to get splinters out, close wounds and even pierce your ears. But the safety pins still didn’t appear. Instead, the workers took me to the back and let me close up my pants with the office stapler.

3. To save money, I started making my own lunch at home. My host parents said I had to eat the food that I buy within two days. But I showed them zip-top bags I brought from America and felt really superior, explaining that zip-top bags keep food well.

Apparently Americans shoot a lot of radiation at our food that Argentines do without. On Friday night, I started feeling sick from food poisoning. I woke up at 3 a.m. and, thinking I was dying, tried to tell my host parents. I fainted in the hallway and fell face first into a door frame and then face first into a table and then face first into the floor. It was just crazy how consistently I led with the face.

4. It’s hard to make friends abroad. You don’t get culture references. You’re not locally savvy. You ask folks to repeat themselves. You talk slow. In short, you’re like an old person.

So, you take what you get. Thursday I went to a movie with three loser types, but one of them forgot to buy our tickets in advance. Furious, one of the three gave the dude a noogie.

The first guy gave a high-pitched yowl, so the third yelped, “Lay off, why doncha?!” He yanked the second guy’s mustache real hard, who, in turn, got mixed up about who hit him cause his eyes were crossed and poked me in the eyes.

Seething, I pulled his bowler down over his face, but when I stepped back to admire my handiwork, I slipped on a banana peel, a roller skate and an in-progress game of marbles, all suddenly behind me for nebulous reasons. I landed on my butt on a set of Jacks pieces, just short of a speeding trolley.

Next time, think twice before you laugh at slapstick.

E-mail Lewis at ljl10pitt.edu.