Saturday, June 25, 2005

the tribulations of shelly schiess

I'm on an e-mail list for which I keep getting messages from an administrator named "Shelly Schiess". I wonder how many times in her life she has encountered people whose German is limited to Hogan's Heroes and Catch-22 and had to endure the following conversation:

"Um, doesn't your last name mean 'shit' in German?"
"No, that's s-c-h-E-I-s-s. My last name means 'shoot.'"
"You mean it's the more polite form, the way some people says 'oh, shoot' instead of 'oh, shit'?"
"No, like to shoot an irritating person with a gun."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Could be worse. Could be s-c-h-e-i-s-s-e. Whole other kind of gross.