In elementary school, Mrs. Jackson provided each of us with dictionaries one day. She told us to close our eyes and gingerly thumb through the pages, stopping on whichever page we chose. My finger landed among the thin pages of J. Next, we were told to look at the words on our page and pick one that we had never seen. I picked jaywalk and wrote it up on the chalkboard. After reading the definition to the class and contemplating the extra explanation from Mrs. J., I remember thinking it was an unnecessary word in my life. I hardly ever crossed streets in busy intersections because I was from Waco…in reality, the suburbs of Waco, and any moderately busy street intersection was always crossed in the comfort of a station wagon or my mother’s big-as-a-boat Cadillac.
To my knowledge, there is not one simple Spanish word for jaywalk, so we must settle with this WOTD:
cruzar [croo-thar’] : to cross (verb)
To my knowledge, there is not one simple Spanish word for jaywalk, so we must settle with this WOTD:
cruzar [croo-thar’] : to cross (verb)
cruzar mal [croo-thar’ mahl]: cross poorly/bad/wrong (in other words: jaywalk)
Fast forward 18 years or so, and cruzar mal is now part of my daily life. I feel anxious standing on the sidewalk corner. Why would I wait for the red standing man to change to the white walking man when I can just cross now? No cars will come close to me for at least 5 seconds. And there I find myself…across the street. I just crucé mal. Many times I do not wait for the street corner. I take those short, quick glances over my shoulder as I step into the street halfway down the block as if I’m Alberto Contador checking out Lance Armstrong in the 2009 Tour de France to make sure I still have the lead. But one of the biggest threats of cruzar mal isn’t the cars. It’s the little motorcycles and mopeds that the 50,000 BsAs delivery and courier boys use that could potentially give you a whopper of a bruise. In the busy streets of what is the downtown business district of Buenos Aires, it’s not uncommon to see them run someone over every once in a while.
I only think twice about cruzar mal if it’s obvious that I won’t make it to the opposite curb without losing a limb, or…if I’m standing next to or on the corner across from a woman with children who is glaring at me suspecting that I’m a person who cruza mal and will set yet another bad example for her poor Marcelo/a who just 35 seconds before walked by a newspaper stand with nudie magazines plastered everywhere and inquired, “Mamá, Why doesn’t your bottom look like that?”
Ah, the thrilling monotonies of daily life in the big city…
Fast forward 18 years or so, and cruzar mal is now part of my daily life. I feel anxious standing on the sidewalk corner. Why would I wait for the red standing man to change to the white walking man when I can just cross now? No cars will come close to me for at least 5 seconds. And there I find myself…across the street. I just crucé mal. Many times I do not wait for the street corner. I take those short, quick glances over my shoulder as I step into the street halfway down the block as if I’m Alberto Contador checking out Lance Armstrong in the 2009 Tour de France to make sure I still have the lead. But one of the biggest threats of cruzar mal isn’t the cars. It’s the little motorcycles and mopeds that the 50,000 BsAs delivery and courier boys use that could potentially give you a whopper of a bruise. In the busy streets of what is the downtown business district of Buenos Aires, it’s not uncommon to see them run someone over every once in a while.
I only think twice about cruzar mal if it’s obvious that I won’t make it to the opposite curb without losing a limb, or…if I’m standing next to or on the corner across from a woman with children who is glaring at me suspecting that I’m a person who cruza mal and will set yet another bad example for her poor Marcelo/a who just 35 seconds before walked by a newspaper stand with nudie magazines plastered everywhere and inquired, “Mamá, Why doesn’t your bottom look like that?”
Ah, the thrilling monotonies of daily life in the big city…
