My phone rang recently. Suppressed number, display showing only “No Caller ID”. I answered with some irritation — these calls are usually robot voices claiming I haven’t paid something, that I’m in deep trouble with the tax office. Or bored telemarketers trying to flog me a new phone plan.
The woman on the other end spoke too fast, her name lost in transmission. Behind her voice came an unpleasant cacophony that sounded like she was sitting in a McDonald’s kitchen — clattering fryer baskets, the usual symphony of salamanders, microwaves and other fat-heating appliances. I almost hung up.
But I gave her a chance.
From what I could understand: she was checking how I felt after my presentation. I told her she had the wrong number — I hadn’t given a presentation in ages. She seemed confused, insisting I’d recently given a presentation at the hospital.
Hospital? Presentation? No, wrong person, I said.
Then it dawned on me.
I had been to hospital a few weeks earlier. Not to give a presentation though. Wait. Ahhhhhhh!
Language trap, sprung again. Here in Australia, they call going to hospital — or even just seeing a doctor — a “presentation”. After four years in this country, these linguistic landmines still catch me.
Of course I’d been to hospital. Broken toe. But I wasn’t delivering a PowerPoint deck — I was turning up at emergency in the middle of the night, blood-soaked toe in tow, needing medical attention.
Quite a special presentation indeed.
Next time someone mentions a presentation, I won’t think PowerPoint. I’ll think blue lights.
Originally published auf Deutsch at reinergaertner.de (est. 1997, older than Google). AI helped translate this. I helped introduce the errors.