Deformed Man’s Lavatory

Author’s note: This story was accidentally posted to the fiction category. It is not fiction.

———————————

I catch the 2012 Les Miserables film at Cinema Magic in Wuhan China, where I’m working as an English teacher. My viewing party is made up of my friends Sally, Vivi, Joe, and Quinn. On the way into the theatre, Joe remarks that we’re about have the most international film experience imaginable: We’re going to see an American film of a British adaptation of a French musical about a French book, and we’re going to see it in China. Furthermore, with Sally and Vivi being Chinese, Joe being British, and Quinn and myself being American, we’re seeing this film as a group of friends from three different continents. Joe talks about the whole thing like the sheer worldliness of all of it may usher in a new era of global peace.

Instead, it goes down like this:

1. We get into the theatre. I gush to Sally about how Les Miserables is my life, and I saw the Broadway production dozens of times in college, and it’s just totally the Best! Thing! Ever!!

2. The film itself is fun. I keep glancing at everybody to see if they are enjoying it as much as I am.

3. Vivi wipes her eyes on her sleeves as the movie ends. “Oh good!” I say. “I’m glad it made you cry.”

“Is that what you say when you make your students cry?” Joe teases.

4. As we leave the theatre, Vivi and Sally need to use the bathroom, so the rest of us sit on a bench in the lobby to wait for them.

It’s sitting on that bench, shoulder to shoulder with golden-haired Quinn, in this room that smells like Carmel corn, that I make a complete ass of myself.

Quinn spots the English translation on the sign above the handicapped bathroom first. She points up at it, snickering. “Deformed man’s lavatory,” she whispers.

I laugh back, repeating the phrase. Deformed man’s lavatory! Hilarious!!

Quinn’s laughter feeds into mine, and somehow we can’t stop it. It goes on for minutes. I’m doubled over and my stomach is hurting by the time Sally and Vivi come back out. Still, I can’t stop laughing.

“What is it?” Sally wants to know.

Quinn points at the sign. “It says deformed man’s lavatory.”

Sally’s face scrunches up, as she tries to figure it out. “Disabled people are funny?” she asks, at first perplexed, and then worried. “You can’t just point at their bathroom and laugh. It will hurt their feelings.”

Now, I don’t want to be accused of laughing at the plight of disabled people, so I rush in to correct her. “It’s not that. The word is wrong. Nobody would use deformed in this situation.”

“Somebody did,” Vivi points out.

At that point, I notice that Joe is standing in a corner, as far from Quinn and myself as possible.

As we leave the theatre, I try to steer conversation back to the movie. However, Sally has switched to speaking Mandarin, even though Joe and Quinn can’t understand it. She answers my questions about whether she liked the music and the songs, but not a word of English passes her lips. She seems distracted and worried.

“Are you okay?” I ask Sally before we part ways.

“Seeing you and Quinn laughing back there reminded me of why I’m afraid to speak English,” she says, tearing up, still speaking Mandarin. “I know it’s stupid for me to feel that way as an English teacher, but I always feel like foreigners will laugh when I try to speak to them.”

I’ve never laughed at Sally for speaking. We’ve been friends and close colleagues for years. I have, however, often laughed at signs and menus with incorrect translations.

“I was wrong,” I tell Sally.

“No. It’s okay. You showed your true feelings.”

Years have passed since that day at the cinema. Thankfully, Sally was still willing to remain friends with me. I hope she’s forgotten my insensitive laughter at the sign translation, but I haven’t. I think about it whenever I see posts or discussions online mocking “funny” English mistakes on signs, T-shirts, and stationary products. Most of these comments aren’t meant cruelly, but they’re still in bad taste. Those of us who are native English speakers need to remember that we have no right to laugh at the efforts of people who learn a new language just to communicate with us, or even those who are running phrases through translators to try and get a point across for our benefit. What seems like harmless fun to us can often seem like mockery to people who have spent years of their life dedicated to the study of English grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary.