¡Pega tu chicle!
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and it would be a good idea to get in the mood. But how does this work in Mexico? Well, like in most places, Valentine’s Day is a commercial thing, a good excuse to spend a sum of money on someone you care about, or a simple way to stimulate the economy while impressing that certain person.
If you’re not sure whether that certain person feels anything for you, tomorrow will be a good day to send him or her a box of chocolates — let’s say — in order to find out if it’s gum and it sticks…
“What?”, you ask, aghast at the task. “To see if it’s gum and it sticks? What are you talking about!”
I’ll explain. In Mexico there is a very curious expression which consists of a verb and a direct object: pegar (uno) (su) chicle, or “to stick one’s gum (on someone).” This means that if you do it, si pegas tu chicle, you have been successful in your attempt at getting to first base with this person. If it doesn’t stick, he or she wasn’t interested: no pegaste tu chicle.
Another way of phrasing this is in the conditional mode, as in my first example. You can buy the box of chocolates and comment to a friend: Voy a regalarle estos chocolates para ver si es chicle y pega. (Literally: “I am going to give her [or him] these chocolates in order to see if it’s gum and it sticks.) This means that you are going to find out, through the gift of chocolate, whether you moved that person or not, if he or she is willing to accept your advances.
This handy phrase is not necessarily limited to amorous pursuits, though. It can be applied to any situation where one desires to find out if his or her endeavors will be successful or not. Take the boss, for example. If you have a good idea about how to do things better, you might just want to run it by him (or her) quickly and see how he (or she) reacts. In good Mexican Spanish we might say the following:—Le voy a soltar mi idea, como si nada, a ver si es chicle y pega. (“I’m going to run my idea by him [or her], matter-of-factly, and see if it tickles his [or her] fancy.”)
This is like sending out a probe (sonda in Spanish) to see what fortune awaits us. Probes can be of all sorts: amorous, work related, literary, commercial, or scientific. The U.S. sent a probe (called Galileo) into Jupiter’s atmosphere, not really knowing whether it would send back any information at all. They did it to see if it was gum and it would stick. And it did indeed! It stuck for a good number of minutes, sending back all kinds of marvelous information to Earth, before it became unstuck, disintegrating under the enormous pressure and heat of the Jupiterean clouds.
One can pegar su chicle with a product too. Remember Carlos Salinas de Gortari from way back when? Well the first street vendors who came out with the “Salinas in Almoloya doll” (Almoloya is the high-security prison for extremely dangerous or important criminals, in the State of Mexico) wanted to pegar su chicle with the buying public, and they were very successful. People just ate it up. The vendors saw that their doll was “gum” and it “stuck”: pegaron su chicle with the average man-on-the-streets of Mexico City. And now one can get Zedillo dolls and masks, Fox dolls and masks, and even Calderón dolls and masks. Mexicans like to poke fun at “the bad guys.”
But let’s get back to Saint Valentine’s Day. If you really like someone, you can say that he or she te pone a girar. This is a relatively new phrase that older people may not understand right away, but the kids will: Emilia me pone a girar, me enloquece, me mueve el tapete, me cuachalanga (or cuachalanguea), me pasa un resto, me trae arrastrando la cobija. Except for “me enloquece”, the rest of the expressions are definitely colloquial and very colorful. “Me pone a girar” means literally “(she) spins me around.” I think the sense is plain. “Me mueve el tapete” expresses the fact that she moves the rug from beneath my feet, which is a metaphor for the same. “Cuachalangar” or “cuachalanguear” is good slang meaning that someone is very attractive to us, that we like them. Be careful, though, because it works like the verb “gustar”. If I want to say I like someone, I should say Ella me gusta: She is pleasing to me. The same with “cuachalanguea”: Ella me cuachalanguea. If I were to say Yo la cuachalangueo, it would mean that I drive her nuts (in a positive way), which could be somewhat conceited on my part, but who knows!
“Me pasa un resto” is a little more difficult to explain literally, so I’ll go straight to the meaning: she really gets to me, the idea being that she cuts me to the quick, perhaps like Cupid’s arrow. And, finally, if you’re really stuck on somebody, you say that you he or she has you dragging your blanket about: me trae arrastrando la cobija. This is one of the most wonderful expressions of all Mexican Spanish. You can also express it the other way around. If you are truly girando for someone, andas arrastrando la cobija for him or her. I imagine this guy, for example, walking down El Paseo de la Reforma behind a beautiful woman, holding on to a blanket that is trailing behind him, his gaze lost in space but at the same time fixed upon the object of his desire…
Valentine’s Day, love… Here it’s called “El Día del Amor y la Amistad.” So if you don’t pegar tu chicle, you can alway be amigos. And you may be better off.
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