The International Man Of Mystery

I call myself the International Man of Mystery. I was born in the Soviet Union. When I was 12 my family moved to America. When I was 30 I moved to Australia to marry my now-ex wife.

When I was in Russia they said that I was a Jew. I come to America, suddenly I become Russian. I come to Australia, suddenly I become an American.

I used to live for a while in the Australian state of Victoria. They call Victorians Mexicans - as in, south of the border. Maybe they should start calling the Tasmanians Cubans - as in, Communists.

English is quite an interesting language. There are any number of expressions in English that mean something completely different from what you would expect them to mean. I had a friend who came to America at age 13. When someone asked why he left, he said that it was because in Russia "the Jewish people don't feel themselves at home." 

I matched him when I said in a speech before my class that we must "reach our peak."

My father used to be an engineer designing drilling equipment. He composes his resume with the help of a Russian to English dictionary. He looks up the English for the Russian word for "drill" and finds the word "bore." So he puts on his resume, "boring engineer."

The Russian word for condom is "preservativ." So one day someone who's been in America for a long time told a more recent arrival that yogurt was made with "preservativs."

The first thing that kids want to know when faced with a kid from another country is swear words in their home language. So one day my father was pulling into the neighborhood to hear American kids shouting Russian swear words at each other.

Of course kids do interesting things with language even when they don't know the meaning of the words. When my stepson was four or five he threw a toy at me and shouted "sprachen ze deutzsch." I know I did not teach him that. I wonder where he got the reference.