5. ONDE EU FUI AMARRAR MEU JEGUE

Now this one is quite curious. I have always said jegue, which is a donkey, but apparently there’s people out there using a goat, a mule, a mare, and the whole farm.

In any case, the literal translation would keep the same meaning no matter which animal you pick, and it goes like: “Where did I tie my donkey/goat?”

The expression, of course, has nothing to do with actually tying an animal somewhere and forgetting about its location. The meaning here is more like “look at the situation I put myself into” – and it’s usually an intricate situation that you caused yourself to be in, and only afterwards found out it was a pickle. Bad date!

So, let’s say you had the brilliant idea of following your other half in a symposium of talks about a subject you have no idea what it is for four days (any resemblance with my real life is NOT merely coincidental). By the end of the first talk, realizing your brilliant idea was no so brilliant, you would question yourself, and that would be the perfect moment to let our a “Where did I tie my donkey?” And if you think about it that way, I really like the donkey to be our animal of choice, after all, they are the ones known as the stuck-in-place ones, as you would be in a situation that required this expression.

It’s the most suggestive expression to ask yourself “What (optional cursing a depending on the pickle-level of the situation) was I thinking?”

And although it sounds bad, it’s not really always tragic. It could be a tricky situation, an embarrassing situation, a we’ll-laugh-at-this-later situation.

Well, now that I think of it, it is almost always a some-level-tragedy.

My fiancé frequently asks me where did I tie my donkey, referring of my choice of marrying a weirdo like him, but in that case I think it has a twist of humour and irony in it, because I do think my donkey is tied in a very nice place (as long as I stay out of the symposiums!).

So, I invite you, dear foreign, to tie your donkey around here for the next days, I promise you it’s not a bad date.

Till tomorrow,

expressionada