Joy of Spanish
Tiro por viaje
There are certain expressions in Spanish that have no real equivalent in English. Or to be more exact, their English equivalents simply aren’t as expressive. Take the following for example: tirar la casa por la ventana (literally: the throw the house out the window). One can say in English that somebody “went all out” to do something, or that they “spared no expense.” But the idea of throwing a house out the window of that same house is something truly worthy of Looney Tunes. Just imagine this on your TV set: you’re standing there in the living room, you grab onto a door knob, you pull and pull until the door, the wall, the floor and everything else turns into something like chewing gum and you throw the whole kit and caboodle out the window, at which point the screen goes blank.
Now that requires a good deal of effort, so when we tirar la casa por la ventana we go out on a limb — as it were — to do something in an extreme sort of way. This expression is usually used when someone spends a lot of money on something like a wedding reception or any other kind of party: a 15 años, baptism, a bar- or bat-mitzvah, etc. You can’t throw your house out the window every day, so the phrase should only be applied to extraordinary circumstances.
There is another phrase that goes in the exact opposite direction. When something happens all the time, on a regular basis, we say it occurs tiro por viaje, which literally would mean something like “a shot every time you travel,” which of course doesn’t make much sense. The idea, however, is that if something happens tiro por viaje, it always happens, or that it happens very frequently. The idiom is usually employed when we consider the occurrence to be somewhat less than welcome. Let’s say a friend of ours regularly gets a requerimiento (a form letter from Hacienda, the Mexican version of the irs) letting us know that (according to them) our taxes are in arrears. Now this friend is obviously upset and he’ll most likely complain: “No lo entiendo. Tiro por viaje me envían estas cartas, ¡pero siempre pago mis impuestos puntualmente!” (“I don’t get it. I keep getting these letters, but I always pay my taxes on time!”)
And let’s say another friend, a woman this time, is fed up with riding the Metro because she often gets stared at, or worse: she receives piropos (hold your horses: we’ll get to this word right away). “Tiro por viaje,” she laments, “me miran de arriba abajo y me dicen ‘mamacita.’ ” (“They’re always looking me over and calling me ‘little mother.’ ”) Okay. “Mamacita,” literally “little mother,” is a vulgar way of letting a woman know she’s attractive. It’s a tasteless way of doing it, but deep down it’s a compliment. Most people who use this sort of piropo (patience, we’ll get there) don’t have the vocabulary, guts, or self-esteem to go about it in a more acceptable or civilized way. True: it can be understood as a backhanded aggression, meaning it’s an aggression disguised as a compliment. It can be intended to make women feel uneasy, and who can blame them? In certain circumstances it would make me feel uneasy, and it wouldn’t matter who it came from.
Usually, the “mamacita…” comment is followed by the equally vulgar and tasteless “…qué buena estás,” which would be the rough equivalent of calling someone a “piece” in English.
Some may complain that I bring up gutter Spanish in my articles, but I feel that it’s all part of living in and having to deal with the real world. I still haven’t found a text book that has dealt adequately with this problem. Language isn’t all “prettiness,” a collection of “cutesy” expressions to impress friends at teatime. On the contrary: it reflects the lives of the people who speak it, and those lives are varied in extreme. One must be prepared to confront all situations, even unpleasant ones.
The piropo, literally a flattering comment, has practically been banned from the United States on the grounds that it is a form of sexual harassment. Personally, I feel that’s unfortunate and in most cases untrue. Although piropos can indeed be vulgar, they can also be beautiful and truly flattering. And they don’t necessarily have to be directed toward women from men, even though that’s the road most taken. Barring the tasteless forms of piropos, most Mexican women welcome them. As a matter of fact, if they don’t receive a certain daily diet of these flattering comments, they start to think something’s wrong. One friend of mine, reflecting on a recent trip to the us, complained about the “frigidity” of the locals. When I asked her why she was of that opinion, it all boiled down to the fact that nobody ever mentioned the way she looked, behavior which she considered insulting.
In Mexico it is customary to greet a woman with something like “Buenos días, ¡qué guapa viene usted el día de hoy!” (“Good morning. How pretty you look today!”) Some think this is sexist because one’s appearance has nothing to do with one’s competence. This, of course, is debatable, but I never mind it when a woman makes a favorable comment about my suit, or jacket, or the way I comb my hair. I don’t even mind it if it comes from a man because I believe it’s more social than sexual. One must understand that social codes are extremely important in Mexico, and the fact that one acknowledges that one is speaking with a woman, and an attractive woman at that, does not mean one is harassing her sexually. Sexual harassment does, unfortunately, exist, but most people know how to tell the difference between an innocent piropo and genuinely offensive behavior.
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