Taco Night

Remember when people had names you could recognize? Now they have names you can’t even pronounce. How many of these unusual names are a result of poor spelling instead of individualism and creativity? There might not be much creativity when it comes to naming your Catholic child, but at least you are familiar with William and John and Mary and Catherine.

While at the grocery store today, I noticed my cashier’s name tag as he scanned my groceries. “Hello, my name is Cornious,” it said. Cornious? What? Cornelius is an unusual name enough, but Cornious? Do you pronounce it the way you think you would? Is his nickname Corny? Instead of expressing my curiosity, I just concentrated on swiping my credit card and bagging my own groceries.

I got in my car and texted my friend MJ. “My cashier’s name at the grocery store is Cornious.”

She replied with what I was thinking, “Corn holeyooo!!” That’s why we’re friends.

Then she called me and said she had a horrible story from the other day. MJ is in the process of having a fence installed in the backyard of her new house. Like most things that involve home maintenance, this fence has been a pain in her ass. Her neighbors wouldn’t respond to their request to adjoin the new fence to their existing fence on one side of their property. The covenants and by-laws of their community are very rigid when it comes to things like fences, involving pages of paperwork and committee approval and the same bullshit that goes into anything that should be simple like a fucking fence. But they need one. Between the toddler and the two dogs, MJ’s life needs something with clearly defined parameters. She jumped through all the hoops and dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s and the stars had aligned just so, and it was fence go time.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, on this other day, the men came to install her new fence. The main guy was a small gentleman of Latino descent, of Hispanic heritage, possibly Mexican. He spoke English with a heavy Spanish accent, and his uniform had the name “Tacho” embroidered above the shirt pocket. When MJ asked him if he had all the approved paperwork for the fence, he either didn’t know what she was talking about or didn’t understand her. After a rudimentary exchange, which I am sure involved pantomime and speaking too loudly (as if talking louder makes English easier to understand), the man got started on the fence.

A short while later, there was a knock on MJ’s door. “Ma’am,” The man said when she opened the door, “do not panic.”

No good news ever began with that sentence.

“Do you have sprinkler?” he asked her.

“No, no sprinkler, we don’t have a sprinkler system,” she answered. Behind her the dogs barked and the baby cried.

“Sprinkler? Next door?” he tried again.

“No, none of us. No sprinkler system,” she replied.

“Lots of water,” he trailed off.

MJ rushed outside and indeed there was a lot of water, gushing out of a pipe that did not belong to a sprinkler system, but rather was the water to the neighbor’s house. The dogs ran after her.

“The big dog, I am not scared of, “the man said. “It is the little dog what I fear.”

MJ got the dogs back inside, along with the screaming baby, and tried again to survey the damage.

In his defense, how was the man to know that the water line to the neighboring house would be on MJ’s property? MJ was just as surprised as he was. In a panic, she called another neighbor over to ask what to do.

“I’m freaking out,” MJ said to her neighbor. “Taco just punched a hole through the neighbor’s water line and now my yard’s flooded.”

“MJ,” her neighbor said. “His name is pronounced Ta Cho.  Cha, like chugging or change.”

“Oh my God, I just called that man taco. I thought it was pronounced taco. I fucking thought his name was Taco?” MJ was mortified.

She was even more mortified that he was standing behind her when she said it.

He finished the job without any further incidents, despite being called a taco. And eventually the neighbors had their water line repaired, which really should not have been on MJ’s property to begin with. Hopefully everything will work out okay and MJ won’t have to have Tacho come back for any fence touch ups.

 Good fences might make for good neighbors, but it’s never a good idea to piss off your laborers.