Bring On the Salts!

I learned today that you don't actually need a foreign language to encounter a cultural gap. There is a sweet older woman at church who is from England. She and her husband are here in Granada doing missionary work. She has tried, but really has not been able to learn much Spanish. Her husband is from Argentina, and speaks both English and Spanish fluently. She has been very happy to have me (another English-speaker) around lately, and we've become fast friends.



Her husband's mother has dementia, and they have repeatedly had to return to England to help with her living arrangements. Her condition is deteriorating, so they are now cutting their time here short and returning to England permanently before the end of March. Today my new friend and I were discussing her moving arrangements, and she caught me completely off guard with a casual comment that had me laughing well into Sunday School.

I knew just what she meant when she talked about the 'removers' coming to pack and load their 'flat.' Most of the colloquialisms and semantic differences between us are so minor as to be almost unnoticeable. We talked about what needed to be done, and she told me that the biggest help would be in cleaning up the place after the movers loaded all their things. She assured me, however, that it would be a quick and simple job to tidy things up; in fact, that it would "go through like a dose of salts."

I didn't think anything of the phrase at first -- didn't know what it meant, but in context I got the drift, so I just let it sail over the top until the "dose of salts" hooked on and jerked a mental double take out of me. Then I started to laugh. She looked at me a little funny, and I had to explain that I'd never heard that one before, and I just needed a moment to gather my wits again. When she saw my reaction, she began to giggle as well.

I've never actually had occasion to use a "dose of salts," but should the need ever arise, I will now rest assured that it will all be smooth sailing, as it were. Now I'm trying to find a way to work it into ordinary conversation . . .