I spent 4 years surrounded by the Dutch at Dordt College.
I was prepared for this.
We were at a nice restaurant/bar downtown, and I was having a terrible time playing shufflepuck. The middle-aged woman who looked somewhat like Miss Cleo behind me found my struggles to be particularly amusing. After a third straight turn of sending the pucks soaring off the edge of the table, I turned to her and verbally affirmed what she was witnessing:
"Hey I'm really bad at this, huh??"
Her laughter-filled response was made no more understandable by her thick accent. My decision to talk to her was made in part because I wanted to figure out where she was from, but also because I was about as successful in getting the young girl I was playing against to talk to me as I was at keeping the puck from careening off the table. Social Darwinism won out.
I asked the colorfully dressed old woman for some tips and she told me to simply "Stop sucking"-- advice I always try to employ on a daily basis. Despite this brilliant bit of coaching, I still, in fact, was sucking. Jennifer (I learned her name while the mime I was playing against took her turn) agreed to come over and coach me. She was in her 50's, so she clearly had some wisdom about shufflepuck to share.
Her next bit of advice was both helpful and slightly demoralizing.
"Start with the puck directly in the middle!" She scolded.
When I told her that I was afraid to do so because for some reason the puck always slid far left, she told me "Well throw the puck straight! Stop bending left! You aren't gay are you?"
I guess sometimes you have to tear someone down before you can build them back up.
On my next turn, I scored on all four pucks. Apparently attacking the legitimacy of my heterosexuality is the best way to get favorable results from me.
Several high-fives, fist pounds, and epic shots later, I managed to come from behind and win the game. Jennifer was dancing around in circles, laughing and smiling like a proud mother.
Actually, it turned out she was a mother. As soon as the game ended, her 28 year old daughter came back from a different part of the restaurant and joined us at a table. I think her name was Dominique, but I'm really not sure.
The mother-daughter duo revealed to me that they were from the Netherlands-- Holland to be exact. I told them I went to a dutch school named after Dordtrecht, and they quickly reprimanded me for completely butchering the pronunciation. They then asked me if I knew even one word in Dutch. By some miracle, I was able to recall a sentence that some friends of mine used constantly while they were in Holland.
"Ver es dicht bizinder bahnk?" (I have no idea if I'm spelling it correctly)
Translated to English, I asked them "Do you know where the nearest bank is?"
Laughing at my horrible Dutch, they applauded me nonetheless. After spending some time speaking about differences in our cultures, I noticed that a friend of mine had come to the restaurant with two of her own friends. Doing what any logical person would do, I grabbed my new Dutch friends and joined up with my friend and the two other strangers.
So there I was, on a Thursday night, at a table with five ladies. Four of them I had just met that night, and the 5th one I had not spoken to for more than 15 minutes in a previous encounter. I felt a little out of place.
Upon learning that it was one of the girl's birthdays, Momma-Dutch-Lady-Jennifer kicked herself into party mode. She disappeared for a few minutes, and returned with a bottle of champagne and a shot for the birthday girl (and one for herself, just for good measure). We clinked glasses, cheered to a happy birthday, but were stopped short of drinking the champagne by Jennifer, who was now positioned a few feet from our table, holding her glass in the air.
"EXCUSE ME EVERYONE, CAN I PLEASE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION?" She yelled in her heavy dutch accent.
"TONIGHT IS THIS YOUNG LADY'S BIRTHDAY!!" She screamed, followed by her starting up the "happy birthday" song in an octave much too low.
When the entire restaurant concluded the singing of happy birthday to the girl at our table, we drank our champagne through fits of laughter.
The night continued in this way, with Jennifer making grand gestures of friendship, such as inviting us all out to Holland to stay at her house. She also read a few of the other girl's auras, and told them about the future of their love-lives and jobs.
We all chatted for a few hours until 1 am. After buying a few other drinks for the birthday girl, Jennifer declared it was time to go home. I told Jennifer and her daughter Dominique it was such a pleasure meeting them, and she gave her email address to me, swearing that I should contact her if I'm ever in Europe. And with that she was gone.
It was then that those of us remaining realized Jennifer hadn't paid her check.
Sneaky Dutch.
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