The other day, I received a phone call late in the evening. I was unable to take the call and the person was forwarded to my voicemail. Later on I checked my missed calls, and saw that Kelly, my long time friend, had called me. I could not believe that she had called, considering that we have not talked in ages, it has probably been a good year or more since I spoke to her last. Kelly and I had meet in a Spanish class, actually Spanish linguistics. It was the worst class that anyone could take and we both hated it. The hate for that class in fact brought us together.
In my surprise to see that she had called me I quickly dialed my voicemail, entered my password and had to listen to 5 other messages I had skipped in the past, in order to hear her voicemail. It is to bad that I have not saved her message in order to repeat it word for word. Basically, it went something like this: "Hi Alma, I am in Picosa right now with Lorehinjo, I found out that he is going to Mexico, probably indefinitely and I thought that to call you and see if you wanted to come out and wish him well." When I heard this, I thought to myself Ok?...has she been drinking? Well she seems she has everything straight...this is not a message you expect to get from someone you have not hear from in such a long time. Especially since I have only seen that guy, Lorehinjo (I am not sure if this is the correct spelling of his name) probably twice, casually while salsa dancing and even this was probably 2 years ago. As you might guess I did not go out that night, it was to late already and the salsa night at Picosa ends early by the time I would have gotten ready and gotten there everything would have been over anyways. I just ended up leaving a message on her Facebook wall saying that I regret not being able to come out but that next week Wednesday would be a good time to meet and wish him well.
Sometimes I say things that I really don't feel and/or don't want to do in order to be polite. And I thought that suggesting to meet another time in order to wish this guy farewell was a polite thing to do. I guess that some Americans would find me phony in such situations where they could clearly see what I say and what I really believe is not the same. However, I think it's just my culture in some way that makes me do these things, because in my culture that would be expected to "act polite' irregardless of whether my actions/words and true inner feelings about the action/words are in alignment.
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