The Lunch Line

It starts in the school lunch line, a place that feels awkward at any age, day after day. First with pointing and either nodding yes or shaking no, smiling either way and getting quantities beyond my capacity. Next I try out pointing and saying either "hayir" for no or "evet" for yes and achieve the same result, but in a slightly more civilized manner. Then comes my botched "cok az", which means very little, but I only say "cok", which means lots, so I get a pile of pasty mashed potatoes on half of my plate. The next day I get it right and end up with tidy little piles of okra, chicken, and rice that don't get mixed up too much in the process. And soon I'm adding in the words for what I what I've learned (which isn't much and relates almost entirely to food) - cok az patates, lutfen, ve cok az pilaf, ve bu. A few potatoes, please, a splash o' rice, and that (chicken), and I'm set, desired food in hand and grateful that the servers smile and bid me a pleasant meal no matter how crude and uncivilized my manner of ordering is. Only they are bearing real witness to my puny, snail-paced language development and I kind of love them.