14. PAGAR MICO

Remember how we were talking about animals being a vast source for Brazilian expressions? Well, here comes another one: “Pagar mico”.

“Mico” is the short version of “mico-leão-dourado”, or lion tamarin monkey, the cutest of the monkeys, in my opinion. So, the literal deal is: “to pay a lion tamarin”. And of course we’re not talking about giving money to this wild animal, the actual meaning is to make a fool of yourself, having a very embarrassing situation happening to you, like when you have

lettuce on your teeth and don’t realize it until you get home.

Ant that’s a thing I know about. It’s unbelievable how many tamarins I pay a day, some so big they’re almost a gorilla, and that’s likely why enormous public embarrassments are called King Kong (you gotta love how dramatic Brazilian people are). Maybe is the fact that I’m always with my head on the clouds, so easily distracted, that I’m always tripping on my own feet and becoming a laugh for a considerable amount of strangers on the streets. Or that I often forget the elevators in my building have cameras, so I keep making faces to the mirror, or dancing to the music on my headphones, or – the worst – taking out my underwear from a not very pleasant wedgie. The monkey is even bigger if the doors open and a neighbour catch me in that disconcerting situation. So many embarrassing memories, so many “micos”…

But where did the expression come from? There was (or still is, I’m not sure, haven’t seen one in a long time) a card game about making animal pairs and the only animal without a pair was the tamarin. It was called the Tamarin Game, and the poor monkey was the only left alone. The loser was the person with the unpaired tamarin at the end, and that’s where the say the expression “pagar mico” come from.

Now, I played that game a lot when I was a kid, it’s a great game for children, and being so prone to public gaffes, I think that makes me an expert on this expression. But I’ll do my best to keep all sorts of embarrassing monkeys out of this blog. So, dear foreign, you can come unafraid.

Till tomorrow,

expressionada