Econ 1,000,001

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© 2001-2002 R.C. Barajas

ecently I attended the second ever International Monetary Fund's Annual Research Conference. My husband Adolfo was presenting a paper, and had invited me to attend. It would be my first foreign language conference -- that language being Economics.

Let me preface this by admitting that I somehow managed to skirt my way through public school without ever taking an Econ course. I also shied away from any form of math that was not strictly required for graduation. Math always gave me a stomachache. That I married an Economist, who engages in mathematical formulae as easily as I pull on my socks, is a very strange, if not slightly wicked providence.

It is beneficial, once in awhile, to be the foreigner, the slack-jawed chump who doesn't speak the language and who goes about with a Day-Glo "Huh?" scribbled across a sloped, bemused brow. If nothing else, the experience can serve to remind us all that in a world blessed with thousands of languages, there is much that will forever dangle out of our reach.

So I entered the snazzy auditorium on the lower level of the IMF with the full knowledge I'd be winging it. I attempted to at least look the part of an Economist -- thank God for those years of acting -- abandoning my usual hi!-I'm-an-arts-major attire and buttoning on my one navy blue suit, hoping to blend in. I was gratified to discover that Adolfo's colleague, Mercedes, was also wearing a navy blue suit. Blend I would.

To my surprise, the slender helmet-haired moderator, Eliana Cardoso opened the conference with a joke.

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