El mundo es un panuelo

One of the short essays I recently read for Spanish class was entitled “el mundo es un panuelo,” or, “the world is a tissue.” It’s an idiomatic expression and our teacher tried to get the class to divine the meaning. What is a tissue like? she asked. Fragile? Soft? While? Disposable? We guessed. All wrong. The relevant characteristic of a tissue is that it is small. And so is the world.

This expression aside, the smallness of the world is a favorite theme of Argentines. Anna’s sister quizzed me recently on my encounters with other Americans in Buenos Aires, insisting that I must surely have run into someone I already knew, or have encountered someone who knew someone I knew.

These thoughts were not misguided. The world is small. Of the four other students in my Spanish class, three of them provide some evidence for the small world theory. One is living with a fellow Middlebury alumni and ex-WRMC dj, while another is in a band that I played on my radio show in Chicago. Nate and I have run into a third classmate so often and in such varied parts of the city that it certainly makes the city of Buenos Aires, if not the world, feel small. -EMW