When Jordana and I used to ride the Metropolitan Transit Authority together, one of our favorite things to do was to read the Spanish advertisements that ran along the ceiling of the train. Or rather, she would read the ads in Spanish, and I would fall into fits of giggles. See, Jordi didn’t speak Spanish. Her accent was remarkably good, though she occasionally slipped into a French pronunciation of words like en. On one particular ride I remember, Jordana decided to raise the stakes and not only read the ads but translate them too. She read an ad for an ambulance-chaser who specialized in envenenamiento con plomo. That’s lead poisoning, but I like her translation better: “an environment with feathers”. I imagined someone calling up this law firm and saying indignantly, “I need an attorney; my environment is rife with feathers!” After that, she spotted a Washington Mutual ad which boasted “Nuestros ATMs no cobran,” or “Our ATMs are surcharge-free”. Jordana said confidently, “There are no cobras in our ATMs,” and I envisioned the poor bastards at Chase and Citibank convulsing from snake venom, their cash littering the floor.
I miss the MTA, and I miss my Jordi.