i'm only bilingual enough to get smacked

Got a call the other day at 8:30 in the morning. I was still pre-coffee, so the chances of me handling anything gracefully were slim. But the call was a problem because it started like this.

Unidentified Man: "Holaaaaa!"

There are a couple of people I know who speak Spanish quite fluently and would automatically use it to say hi, even though they know I'm a monolingual honky. There are other people who do not speak Spanish but have lived in Havanita long enough to do this on reflex. All of them would expect me to recognize their voices, despite knowing that I do not do well without coffee. There are also lots of Spanish-speaking people who get wrong numbers, particularly my number. (I've managed to stop the robocalls from a school district I can't identify.)

All of this, plus my inability to be rude without first preparing myself, meant I just said hello. That was enough to get me flooded with a bunch of Spanish, which I did not recognize any of. I might have, if I'd had coffee.

I tried to think quickly. I tried to remember the pasted-together bits of other languages I know. But I didn't have coffee, and what my brain offered me was this: Je n'est parlez la Espagnol.

... ffffuck.

So I said I don't speak Spanish, in as friendly a way as I could manange, and the guy on the phone happily said - well, I have no idea what, either a sorry about that or a you white moron or I really don't know, but it sounded very cheerful so I'm assuming something closer to the former, and then he hung up.

I only remember words when I have no use for them.