Okieinexile's Blog

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am getting old.

To be honest, that is one of the reasons I am in Paraguay now.  I am getting old and when–if ever–will I get a chance to do this again.

For me a part of getting old is building a collection of aches and pains.  I won’t bore you with an exhaustive list of these.  For one thing, you likely have your own list and we are not in each other’s presence so you can bore me back; it just isn’t fair.  For another thing, most of my pains don’t even have a proper name to be called.  If it is not in Latin, don’t even mention it.

However, I do have a pain that has been dignified with a proper Latin name: Plantars fasciitis. It sounds so much more impressive than just saying that my feet hurt, don’t you think?

When my feet started hurting in earnest, I called my doctor, talked to his nurse, and she said, “Get you some skechers. Get several pairs and swap amongst them.  And get some house shoes to wear around the house.”

I thanked her and then got an appointment to talk to my doctor, who told me the same thing, but–and here’s the important thing–he charged me money for it.  

If we don’t pay for it, we don’t believe it. 

Now here I am in Paraguay.  I brought two pairs of skechers with me, but I didn’t have room for house shoes in my bag.

The floor of the room that I am staying in is tile, so I need my house shoes more than ever. No problem, I thought, I am within 20 minutes of 4 different malls, and 3 of those 4 malls are huge.  I will get myself some house shoes.

Here’s the thing: What is the Spanish word for house shoes?  Duolingo does not cover that. There’s a lot of talking about email and going to the beach, but little–no, nothing–about soft shoes for old people.

I tried zapatos de casa, but that didn’t work.  It might’ve been the dialect.  I don’t know.

In cases like these, I use the Spanish I know, and tell my story to the salesperson.  

If I am lucky it is a young woman.  They are smarter in general.

On this particular occasion, I began by apologizing for not speaking much Spanish.  Then I said I am old; my feet hurt; I need soft shoes to walk to the bathroom in the night. How are these called?

I got the answer: Pantuflas para dormir.  Literally, slippers for sleeping or sleeping slippers. So we would say bedroom slippers,

Do you have any? (Tiene?)

No. (No. Same in Spanish or English.)

But I had a word, and I had three more malls to visit. I cut the task into pieces.  I would do a mall a day, starting at the top floor and then working my way down.  I would go store by store, skipping the ones that obviously needed to be skipped. One does not find bedroom slippers in ice cream stores. 

Not even in Paraguay.

I became a modern day Don Quixote.  Instead of windmills, I jousted with clothing stores. Instead of having Rocinante as my trusted steed, I had cabs and Ubers.

This was a great way to practice my Spanish.

I had short conversations with sales people at clothing stores in the various malls, of course.

But I also had conversations with the cab drivers who took me to and from the malls.

On the way to one mall, when I explained to the driver that I didn’t speak much Spanish, he asked me if I was an American or a German.  (A lot of the cabbies here think I am a German; I’ve decided to be flattered.  I will try to invade Belgium the next time I am in Europe.) When the ride was done, he wrote down his telephone number, and told me to give him a call if I wanted to meet some pretty girls. 

It took my brain a while to process that. When I extracted all the implications of the subtext, I tossed the piece of paper in a trash can.

I had a much better conversation with a different cab driver on the way back. He talked about all the changes in Paraguay over the years: The construction; the foreign investment.

I’ve not yet obtained my pantuflas para dormir, but I have found a place where they might be.  Ponce de Leon looked for the Fountain of Youth; I seek slippers for an old man.

Bobby Winters grew up near Harden City, Oklahoma.  He teaches mathematics and computer science, does woodworking, and blogs at okieinexile.com.