The elephant in the room is that the crap-gangville-strip is the famous Route 66. They should be embarrassed.

One evening of our trip, we go to a fantastic mexican restaurant. They make a margarita to end all margaritas. Normally I'm a frozen margarita girl because it needs to be frozen to cover up the nasty syrupy mess that most places serve. This one is excellent on the rocks, no salt necessary.

At one point, a woman comes over and says "Quieres mas? You have limonda o agua?" Now, as I have neither lemonade nor water, I pay no attention. (Or maybe it's because I'm nose-deep in my big-ass margarita glass.) Until I notice there's been no response.

"Uh, Alex," I say. "Do you want more lemonade?" "Oh. Sure." He passes his glass over, and I look curiously at Sam. "Why are we not responding to the waitress?" "Well I know I didn't get what she was asking." Huh. Over the years, I've tried to maintain some semblance of the remedial Spanish I took in high school. Paid off, I guess, as I barely notice the Spanish-English merging that she uses as she comes and goes from our table. I'm sure she's dumbing it down (Enlish-ing it up?) some, but I'm still understanding her perfectly. I'm proud of (read: full of) myself for my bad-ass bilingual-ness. Even from the bottom of my second delicious big-ass margarita.

And then we end up at Wendy's a few nights later. "Welcome-to-Wendy's-I'll-take-your-order-whenever-you're-ready-unless-of-course-you're-a-dumbass-gringo-in-which-case-you're-not-understanding-a-word-of-this-and-I-will-treat-you-like-crap," comes through the speaker. In Spanish. I assume. Because I? Don't speak a single word of Spanish. Apparently.

"Uhm... hi?... Can I... get two orders of nuggets?... And..." "Anything else?" she says. I'm sorry? Since when does "and" mean "I'm not in the middle of a sentence"? I know I'm slow here, but I'm thinking of how effed-up "nuggets de pollo" would sound. Eventually I finish and she gives us our total- I think?- and, we assume, asks us to pull up. Except I can't understand a word she says in English, either. I'm so flustered that I screw up the order and have to ask her to add on some junior bacon cheeseburgers at the window.

Now this is a personal insult. Right? It must be because the holy-bitch grows fangs. Sam hands over what I believe is way too much money, but it must not have been because we only get a dollar and change back. Huh. But then frostys come through the window (wee!), and then she yells at us. Something about nuggets de pollo? She shuts the window and Sam stares at me. "Pull up?" I say. It's really an odd sensation, the combination of fear, confusion, and growing pissed-off-ness. The woman is being heinous, but she's holding my nuggets de pollo hostage, y'all.

Eventually she comes out and- I am not kidding- throws the bags of food through the car window before dashing back into the restaurant. Thank god we got our frostys before we pulled up. And pissed-off wins the emotion battle that has been roiling within me. Heinous-holy-bitch is lucky because Sam is the one in the driver's seat and pulls away before I can go jump the woman.

It's not until we're almost back to the hotel eight miles on the other side of the crap-gangville-strip that we had to traverse (at ten-thirty at night) to get there (because of the lying-liar signs at the exit that said Wendy's was right here) that I found the receipt stapled to the bag. She had short-changed us by ten bucks. If I didn't live two thousand miles away? She and I would have words. Of course, we wouldn't be able to understand each other...