I am hopelessly bilingual--

plain American and Redneck, that is.

My friend Annie is a New York 'Rican (her term) and she was trying (key word here) to teach me some Spanish. She said it was from a Spanish song. How bad can that be?

I practiced and practiced and she repeated and repeated. At the time, I thought she was giggling at my atrocious pronunciation. No, something more sinister was at hand.

On my way home that night, I was in the elevator, practicing again so I could impress my husband. Annie was with me, smiling like a proud mama --- or so I thought.

With us were several other Spanish speaking ladies. As I was practicing, one of them looked startled and said to Annie, "Did she say 'yada yada'? (I KNOW how to say 'yada yada', I'm trying to be polite.)

Annie started giggling and nodded. I said, smartly, "Annie's teaching me Spanish!"

The elevator almost went straight to the ground floor because these girls just lost it. It got worse when I asked what it REALLY meant.

I don't know whether or not to believe them now, but they said it loosely meant 'suck the lollipop'.

Hey, it's candy-- how bad can it be?