The interstate highway was not crowded on that day. It was only about a few weeks after I bought my car. The interstate was the fastest way to the downtown and the malls. But I did not like the roaring sound of the 440 cubic inch engine when I drove on the interstate over 60 mph.
There were unusually few cars on the road. There must have been a little more when I got on the interstate. They became fewer and fewer as I passed them by. The only one left was a white car behind me. I sensed something strange. I figured out what was happening when the driver of the car put a flashy red light on the roof. I was over-speeding. The man made his car run right next to mine. He did some gesture with his hand, which I did not understand. I simply supposed the typical situation of “a busted over-speeding driver” on the road back in Japan. And I supposed that I should follow the police car. I was correct. The police car swiftly passed my car, came in front of me, and slowed down.
The police car led my car to the side of the interstate and stopped. I parked my car right behind the police car. A policeman appeared. He opened the door and slipped his big body into the position next to me on the long bench seat of my car. I knew that over-speeding was not a right thing to do. However, I was more concerned with my linguistic problem in the required conversation with the policeman than to check my deposit balance to pay the fine.
My English listening skill was miserably poor in those days. The listening ability depended on many factors of speaker’s English. The speed of speech, and the wording (or vocabulary) are usually controllable factors to the speakers. When the speakers found me lost in the conversation, they could always speak slowly and could choose easy expressions. What most of the people around me could not expect was my English tuning ability. It would take a long while for me to synchronize my English comprehension clock-pulse with those of the speakers.
Due to speakers’ dialects, slight differences in pronunciations, tones of the voices, and possibly number of the teeth left, each speaker’s English sounded very different to me. I used to “input each personal pattern of English in my memory” by carefully listening to a speaker for a while to make my semantic processor synchronize with the speech. This could be done one person after another. Some speeches took only three minutes for me to synchronize with them. Others took thirty minutes. This means that I could virtually communicate in verbal English only with those I knew well.
The challenge started. And it turned out to be a really tough case for me. The policeman began with confirmation of what I did. He soon understood that I was not following him well. He repeated slowly. But the speech did not reached my brain. He spoke in other words. My brain processed only the numbers included in the speech. And my brain matched the comprehended numbers with two speeds, which were speed limit and my speed on the road. They matched and I nodded.
He asked for my driver’s license drawing a small square with his pointing fingers in the air. Policemen usually ask for driver’s licenses to the drivers probably all over the world. Without comprehending his words, I submitted my international driver’s license, which must have been very rare for him to see in Klamath Falls. He said something that included the words, “OIT (Oregon Institute of Technology)” and “student.” I did not understand the question. But I said, “Yes” anyway. Finally the policeman heard my voice. It was only the beginning of the exhausting guessing game. It continued until he felt dejected to say something involving “warning.” I asked back the word, “warning?” He said, “Yes. Verbal. Warning.” I again repeated, “Verbal warning.” He again repeated, “Yes. Verbal warning.” The meanings of the two words suddenly combined in my mind and made sense. “I will be let go.” I thought.
But the policeman did not seem very happy to let me walk away. He began some lesson for me to learn. Of course, my asynchronous processor did not decode what he said except for a word, “Suspension.” What I did not understand could not be remembered. All I could imagine now is that he was explaining the suspension of my driver’s license in the case of another over-speeding. My semantic processor back then withdrew the word out of the vocabulary database in my head, which barely showed a typical usage of the word as a loan word in the Japanese language. As pronounced “Sa-Su-Pen-Shon,” by Japanese people, the word in our daily conversation means shock absorbers set above four tires of the car. (There are numerous loan words used in the Japanese language. Most of them are borrowed from English. Incidentally, “Sa-Su-Pen-Dah,” from “suspender” is used only for suspenders of trousers.)
I murmured, “suspension.” Policeman nodded this time with some satisfaction on his face. He was apparently happy because this Japanese over-speeding scum finally seemed being moved by his words. But my response pushed him down into a labyrinth.
I wondered how our conversation detoured into the issue about shock absorbers. I hesitated to ask him back what he had meant by the word because I would not understand his explanation anyway. So I answered about the shock absorbers that I could think of at that time. “I think… I have one. Actually… There are… Four of them.”
He became totally confused. He said something in a loud voice. He repeated some questions very fast. However slow his questions were, the fact I could not synchronize with him did not change. He sounded like he raised various questions. The only question that reached my semantic processor was a one with “when,” “get,” and the “suspension.” I immediately opened my mouth saying, “When? I got them… When I bought this car. They… Came… With the car.”
The policeman’s frustration obviously reached a certain critical point. The encounter with this non-English-speaker was not what he could handle. He burst into flood of seemingly angry words, which never sounded like English to me.
I gave up. There would be no mutual understanding through any verbal communication. I gestured to the policeman to calm down. I pulled a black lever beside my knee and opened the engine hood. His cautious stare followed me. I got out of the car and signed him to come with me. I opened the hood wide. I pointed a rusted rim covering the tire and said, “There… Must be… One of the… Suspensions… Around here.” He apparently got dumbfounded instantly. He stood still for a while and opened his mouth to give me his final warning. He shook his right pointing finger toward me, as if he had been trying to thrust his words into me. Of course, I did not comprehend it, either. He walked away. He removed the red light above his car and drove away.
I was left alone. I was relieved. But I felt sorry because the worst linguistic calamity occurred as I had foreseen. The quick English synchronization with others’ became the prime target of my English practice after the day. Unfortunately, I have made only a little progress in the synchronization since then.