We’ve all been there: one of your suitemates spent the summer studying economic inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa, another worked at a lab where they discovered a cure for some rare disease, and you spent your time off sitting in your bedroom in suburban Ohio eating Cheetos and watching way too many YouTube videos about C-list celebrities. You need a cover story, something to make you look just as sophisticated and interesting, so when asked what you did over break you blurt out that you went to Spain. This would be great (nice spur of the moment thinking!), but now they’re all asking questions about it, and you don’t know how to answer them. Well, here is your guide.
- Learn approximately thirteen Spanish words
The first roadblock that many Sp-raudsters (Spain fraudsters) run into is usually the language barrier. But have no fear, because now you do! It’s a little known fact that if you learn about thirteen words of any language, people will believe you are fluent. Bonus points for the more obscure they are. Any Joe Shmoe knows that “hola” means guitar (or was it cello?), but only a true Spanish speaker knows that “erizo” means hedgehog or “he perdido todo sentido de humanidad” means “I have lost all sense of humanity.” If one of your suitemates speaks Spanish, just tell them the dialect in Spain is different than in their home country. If they are from Spain, call them a dirty, filthy liar. Who’s making up the story now, pal?
- Plagiarize
This step is crucial for believability but has two different options, depending on the severity of your situation. The ideal option here is to find someone who did actually go to Spain over the summer, steal the pictures they took off their Instagram, and then try to pass them off as your own. However, if you are pressed for time, it’s always an option to just Google “Spain” and download the first few images that appear in search results to your camera roll. To really sell it, you can even Photoshop a picture of you onto these stock images to make it look like you were taking a selfie. If any of your friends start to look too closely, snatch your phone away and throw it across the room, claiming you saw a mouse and were trying to hit it. At the very least this will change the subject.
- Hire a Spanish friend (Or an amigo as you said this summer *wink wink*)
Look, there’s got to be at least four or five people originally from Spain living within a 10 mile radius of you right? Times are tough, who doesn’t need some spare cash!? Find one of these Spaniards and pay them an amount-o grande of money to pretend to be the friend you made during your summer in Spain. Bonus points: Come up with a backstory together to make it believable, maybe even tell your friends that you fell madly in love with this person and are heartbroken that they soon must return to España. Cry, shed a few tears. As your friends try to comfort you, reassure them that you will be alright— but they must never speak of Spain again.
—S. Lanz
