Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Does Green Mean Go?

During Friday's bus ride to the capital to see The Nutcracker, we were sitting at a red light. Estrella, one of my section's girls with whom I was sharing a seat, looked over to me and asked, "It needs to turn green for us to go, right?"

I almost didn't even catch what she was talking about.

What?

"The light. We need green to go, right? And what do yellow and red mean again?"

Now Estrella is a smart girl, and it had never ever ever occurred to me that not everyone automatically knows what the colors of a stoplight mean. What???

And then I thought about it, and I realized that the only place in the entire country of Guatemala where I've seen a stoplight is in the capital. They don't tend to exist anywhere else -- just the occasional STOP sign and the hope that when you pull out in front of oncoming cars, someone will swerve to miss you. There is never a light to control traffic, which is probably why all Guatemalans drive like complete maniacs.

And so I guess, if I was only 13 and had hardly ever come across stoplights in my entire life, I might not be so 100% on those colors either.

1 comment:

Celeste said...

as you know, even I have a hard time with the colors...

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