German

A small story:

Kid is multilingual, with the capacity to pick up the basics of a language in a weekend. I spoke primarily Spanish until I was three, took three years of French in high school, spent a month with Kid in Rome while she took immersive Italian classes.

The combination of these three languages in my head means I speak none of them but have an equally baffling accent in all three, sort of "Eurotrash-meets-closed-head trauma". Apparently, the only non-English language where I have no accent is German, a language I do not speak.

I know only two phrases in German:

1. "I'm sorry, I do not speak German" which, frustratingly for the German person to whom I am saying this, I say without any accent. I appear to be modest. They start chatting. I look panicked and feign death until they leave.

The second faultlessly-pronounced phrase I know in German, as I'm sure you have guessed, is:

2. "The light beer with the full-bodied taste."

I loved being an assistant casting director in my late teens. It wasn't a highly intellectual job, probably could have been done by a reasonably-trained corgi, but every day was new and my boss, Beverly Long, was really smart and really sane. It was always a pleasure to watch her work.

Because of her kindness, her work ethic and her sanity, production companies would hire her again and again for commercial casting sessions. One of the companies which adored her was a German ad agency. From Germany. She adored them as well, not the least because their casting sessions lasted weeks.

"The Germans are coming!" she would trill into the phone to me and I would, always, restrain myself from making a joke about hiding Poland. I'd show up for work the next day, knowing I was now employed for the rest of the month and my job was about to be weird.

If you have ever thought, "Germans have absolutely no sense of humor," let me assure you, some of them do. They have a German sense of humor. If you meet one of those, you will come to appreciate the ones without that genetic flaw.

Twice a year, we'd cast a cigarette campaign. The campaign was always the same; a Very Attractive Person would be offering a cigarette to an Unfortunate Soul. In the mornings, we'd see the Unfortunate Souls; someone with one leg, or a man with abundant back hair willing to wear a Speedo on a German billboard, or an ancient person, ideally with a hunchback.

Every morning, the front office looked like Lourdes.

Every afternoon, we would be swarmed by gorgeous models over the age of 25, because here in the United States you can't appear in a cigarette ad under the age of twenty-five. If you have ever tried to remove a Kong from a terrier's mouth, you’ll understand what it's like to get someone paid for their looks to confirm their real age.

Attractive Person interacts with Not-So-Attractive person we can mock was that cigarette brand’s entire campaign for over a decade. The German ad guys were never not-delighted by this, frequently breaking into peals of laughter at the headshot of someone who, say, lacked part of their head.

One day, when they were shooting the ads here, we got a panicked call from an agent. Her client, a stunning multiracial man, had arrived on set to discover he was supposed to be offering a cigarette to a guy in a white pointed hood.

German humor.

As the Chicago ad guys (and they were nearly always men) would find reasons to shoot commercials in Los Angeles when the snow in their city was drifting to the second floor, the Germans would find runic reasons to shoot commercials in Los Angeles which any rational person would have shot in Germany.

Once, we cast a beer commercial. It was to be shot in a studio, with a German version of the beer which would have to be shipped over and the actor would have to speak fluent German. I can only assume the ad guys wanted to wear jeans in public. German ad guys were uniformly excited by wearing jeans and also freakishly unable to understand how to wear them.

"My new pair are dark, stiff, strangely tight through the ankles and billowy in the thighs!"

"MY pair consist of nothing but patches!"

The lead actor had to be attractive, dark blonde and shirtless. My job in the waiting room was to tell a bunch of twenty-five year old men I had to see their ID, then make them take their shirts off in order to not waste time inside. Also, to teach them German.

I'm not saying I would have made an excellent dominatrix, but I am saying I can make men do random things and get paid for it.

On the wall of the waiting room, the phrase, written out phonetically. On a tape, the phrase, being recited again and again. Finally, they would have to say it to me, the new arbiter of all things German.

Casting ran three days. Even as I type this, I hear the tape. I may never stop hearing the tape. If Germany does, in fact, invade Poland once more, I imagine myself as a small, unremarkable spy, wandering into a local pub in Dusseldorf. Locals eye me. Who is this stranger? Perhaps we should kill her. Mutely, I point to the drink I want, which is placed in front of me.

Loudly, I announce, "The light beer with the full-bodied taste," and live to spy another day.