When I was14, I swept the floors behind the scenes at a theater. As you do when you are making your way as an aspiring performer. I also did the laundry. It was a nationally heralded theater where Tom Hanks and Al Pacino had performed Shakespeare (long before I swept its stage's planks). They had an "international series" including a group of Chinese Acrobats performing as guest artists during the summer season. These guys had an adorable little chimp in their act. He apparently had a very prestigious film and stage resume, and this was before anyone had been victim to having their face ripped off. They would very frequently throw their personal laundry in the industrial top loader, though it had been explained a million times that there wasn't enough time between the matinées and evening performance for personal laundry, but they feigned ignorance. It is true, none of the seemed to speak any English, but they had been in the country for years, and it seemed they must understand it to some extent.
The youngest of them was 16. He liked to drop the chimp in the industrial top loader and the funny little animal would hide there until I'd opened the lid and scream. I never got use to it. I had a lot of reverence for this little chimp and reminded myself that he was, after all, however tamed, a wild animal. We came to be good friends, the chimp and I, but finding him popping out of the washing machine still scared the SH%T out of me. One day, when this happened, he wouldn't get out of the machine. SO I left the lid open and turned it on gentle spin. Needless to say he thought I had some SERIOUS POWERS and was loving it, laughing, screaming, squealing, waving his arms. I was laughing my head off. The 16 year old acrobat heard our little play date going on, despite his prank, and came screaming into the laundry "STOP THAT!!!! STOP THAT MACHINE!!! GET HIM OUT OF THERE!!!!"
Funny how he could suddenly understand (and even SPEAK) the language he needed to when it came to getting in trouble. I know when I've pissed off my Italian cousins, I know the words to apologize, and I know how to avoid doing it in the first place, though I speak very little of the language (much to my shame). The universal language as it turns, is in the listening. Maybe that was what Babel really was -- when we all stopped listening to each other.
