For many years, I was a member of Curves, a gym for women only. Back then, I bounced lots of my storylines on my workout friends. The grandmother angle in Unraveled was born during a workout, but that's another story...
As incentive to show up for workouts, we received Curves t-shirts for every milestone we met. First one hundred workouts, five hundred workouts...I got my seven-hundred-and-fifty-workout t-shirt a month before the gym closed. There were also monthly attendance and special events prizes, which were mostly t-shirts. So, no surprise that over the years I collected a lot of t-shirts with the Curves logo on it.
They were nice and well-made t-shirts, so I wore them in many places, not just at the gym, and I also packed a few in my suitcase when I went on trips. I didn't think the word curves would offend anyone, and I never felt it did. If anyone looked at me funny, it flew right over my head.
Around the same time, one of my Curves friends went to a conference in the United States. I can't remember in which big city they held her conference, but she stayed in a very nice hotel. One early evening she stood in the lobby wearing a Curves t-shirt, with the word curves positioned over her bosom. She was waiting for someone when an older couple approached her. Then out of the blue, the older woman asked her "How much for the girls?"
My friend just stared in total confusion at the woman who spoke with a strong Eastern European accent, but then it occurred to her that maybe the meaning of the question got lost in the translation, so she replied with something like "I'm not sure I understand."
The older woman pointed at my friend's bosom. "Your sign says curves. Where I come from it means hooker. So how much for the girls?"
We couldn't stop laughing when my friend recounted the incident at the gym a week later, but on the spur of the moment, she was flabbergasted then completely mortified to have been mistaken for a hooker or a madam. She just left the lobby and went to her room to change clothes without asking the couple which language they spoke...or for whom they wanted to hire the girls. In hindsight, those would have been interesting questions LOL
To satisfy my own curiosity, I played with Google Translate and found out that in Romanian, curvÄ means hooker. It was the only European language that came close to meeting the criteria.
I don't know if my friend ever wore that t-shirt again, but I stopped packing clothes with words on them when I go on trips. That being said, one of these days, that incident will end up in one of my novels.
Happy Reading & Stay safe. Many hugs!
JS
As incentive to show up for workouts, we received Curves t-shirts for every milestone we met. First one hundred workouts, five hundred workouts...I got my seven-hundred-and-fifty-workout t-shirt a month before the gym closed. There were also monthly attendance and special events prizes, which were mostly t-shirts. So, no surprise that over the years I collected a lot of t-shirts with the Curves logo on it.
They were nice and well-made t-shirts, so I wore them in many places, not just at the gym, and I also packed a few in my suitcase when I went on trips. I didn't think the word curves would offend anyone, and I never felt it did. If anyone looked at me funny, it flew right over my head.
Around the same time, one of my Curves friends went to a conference in the United States. I can't remember in which big city they held her conference, but she stayed in a very nice hotel. One early evening she stood in the lobby wearing a Curves t-shirt, with the word curves positioned over her bosom. She was waiting for someone when an older couple approached her. Then out of the blue, the older woman asked her "How much for the girls?"
The older woman pointed at my friend's bosom. "Your sign says curves. Where I come from it means hooker. So how much for the girls?"
To satisfy my own curiosity, I played with Google Translate and found out that in Romanian, curvÄ means hooker. It was the only European language that came close to meeting the criteria.
I don't know if my friend ever wore that t-shirt again, but I stopped packing clothes with words on them when I go on trips. That being said, one of these days, that incident will end up in one of my novels.
Happy Reading & Stay safe. Many hugs!
JS
Interesting bit of data here. Keep writing
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