Singing in Spanish?  Piece of cake!

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Or maybe I should say Feliz Cinco de Mayo.

Either way, it makes me think about the triumph my wife and I enjoyed when we were on our honeymoon about 5 years ago, which actually had nothing to do with Cinco de Mayo.

We went to Curacao — yes it is the place where Blue Curacao was created.  It’s a somewhat multi-lingual country.  People live there that speak Spanish, English, Dutch, and I believe German.

One night, we went to this bar that had karaoke going on, which is quite a magnet for my wife, who can really sing.  There weren’t many people there, but there was another couple there who spoke mainly Spanish.  And they weren’t bad either.  Now we pretty much just speak English, even though I took 3 years of high-school Spanish.

The karaoke host spoke both languages of course.  So through him, the other couple gave us a little challenge.  They’d sing a song in English and we’d sing one in Spanish.  We look about as white as you can get, so they probably figured we knew about as much about Spanish as a cat knows how to bark, which is sort of true.

I can’t remember what song they did, but they were OK.  But they hadn’t counted on the fact that there was one Spanish hit single in the US — a song from the 70’s, “Eres Tu” by Mocedades.  My wife knew it fairly well, and I had the freakin’ record, so I knew it like the back of my hand!  So we won, whatever that meant — there was no official vote or anything.

But that’s my memory of knocking Spanish singing out of the park.  And when it comes to singing, I’m grateful to have something to hold onto.