On the Road: Radio Bilingua

Beinvenidos Yuma!

There are some benefits to travelling alone.

First, you can listen to any music you feel like. In the five hours on the road to Yuma this morning, I started out listening to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band a few times. I finally turned off the CD and tuned in the radio when I couldn't stand crying anymore.

You know. That song, "She's Leaving" or whatever its real title is. I tear up just thinking of when my girls go off to their own lives. I just hope that, unlike the girl in the song, mine won't ever feel like they're living at home alone. Of course, they're all under seven. Let's test this theory in about six years, shall we?

So, once The Beatle's were shunned, I was in reach of some of my favorite music: Mexcian polka.

Seriously. It's so lively and hokey, like Heimlich on helium.

An added benefit to listening to Radio Bilingua is I get to practice my Dora the Explorer Spanglish.

Now, I can see why some folks out there are so upset with Hecho en Taiwan on their backscratchers. It's all Dora's fault. Dora, with her salta this and estrella that, makes us all think we can listen to a simple Mexican polka station and understand everything being said.

I imagined myself as Gary Larson's dog Ginger:

Only, in this case, instead of talking about what happened to the garbage, I'm hearing "spanish spanish spanish Medicaid spanish spanish salud spanish spanish emigracion spanish spanish Arlen Specter." At first, I thought they may have been talking about drinking to Medicaid, being a bit confused as to why Arlan Specter is chasing shots with immigrants, until I finally remembered "salud" means "health."

With just those little snippets of recognizable words in a jumble of ignorance, who wouldn't think that there's a vast underground society addicted to a drinking game played by illegal immigrants who pound down a shot everytime Arlen Specter votes on a Medicaid issue? No wonder the next radio station I listened to (after Radio Bilingua inexplicably petered out when I neared the border... go figure, what next? No technorock in Germany?), a conservative Christian talk radio show, are reading the entire Charlie Daniels manifesto on why the Mexican flag is an affront to American values. MADD must have gotten to them.

Ok, wait, I'm now getting into the negatives of working alone - no one to make you tune into a different station. Luckily, I was able to realize they were sucking me in to the vortex of disbelief before it was too late.

Next segment: the art of dining alone