Foreign Policy

If there really were a God, he'd have done a better job with our brains. Intelligent design would have given us a brand new file folder for each foreign language added to our heads.

You take a Spanish class in grade school, another folder is added to that big file chest upstairs. And every time you learn a new word or phrase, there's another entry made. Hi. Bye. Thanks. Where's the library? You take French in High school, and another file is created. Hi. Bye. Where's the pen of my aunt?

But no, that's not the way it works. Instead there's just one measly folder labeled "FOREIGN LANGUAGE." That's where everything is tossed in: your Spanish, your French, the few Japanese words you taught yourself last week so you wouldn't be completely clueless on vacation.

And so, you go to a pottery store in Japan and you buy the most perfect ceramic bowl. It's like a religious ritual packaging the piece for you: wrapping it in crisp white paper, lowering it into its box, tying coarse brown rope around the package.

The woman who serves you is so refined, so beautiful, so gracious, you really have to say something. You figure "Thank you" is about all you can manage, so your brain opens up the Foreign Language folder. The pointer slides down the left column and stops at the first matching entry it finds.

And you say to the little Japanese woman, "Gracias."

She smiles like the Mona Lisa; she's heard it before. She bows her head and offers you your perfectly-wrapped package with both hands. "Adios," she replies.