Paco and the Mumbling Foot in My Mouth

In one episode of Seinfeld, Jerry is confronted with a mumbling woman that asks a favor of him. He agrees unknowingly, responding in the affirmative, having no idea to what question he is responding. I have had similar experiences before, most often here in Southern Spain, where the Spanish is weird and the people have a tendency to speak rather quickly and with great variation from Standard Spanish.

To give an example: In Standard Spanish (with little regional difference), the word pescado (fish) is pronounced exactly as it appears. In Southern Spain, there is a tendency to "eat" certain letters, among which figure the "s" and the "d" (in an ending like -ado or -ido). With these changes, the word is pronounced "pehcaoh" -- This is just one of many strange changes that the southerners tend to make to "normal" Spanish.
In my days as a novice Spanish speaker, this of course caused a great number of problems. An example of a conversation might go something like this:

Spanish guy: blah blah blah blah
Me: (laughter--following non-verbal cues around me)
Spanish guy: What are you laughing about? I just asked you a question.

This type of conversation repeated itself many times in my early days in Spain. In general, I am now able to avoid such problems, having been linguistically trained in this area. Just two nights ago, however, I stuck myself in a problem of semi-epic proportions.

There is a man that hangs around the student residence where I live. He is semi-retarded and an alcoholic, and speaks with a a mumbled slur that is nearly impossible to understand. This mumbling man, then, apparently asked me the other night if I would like to join him for dinner at a local fish restaurant of which he was a big fan. I responded affirmatively (it would seem), or at the very least I laughed in a friendly fashion. I was unaware of the mere existence of this conversation, being unable to understand a word that this man speaks.

The following day (yesterday), I receive a call from my friend Raul (of whom I´ve spoken, and who will soon grace this page in photograpic form) telling me that this man, Paco, is looking for us. He has shaved (very rare), changed his pants (very rare), combed his hair (very rare) and seems to be looking forward to having dinner with us. I am totally confused (remember, I didn´t even know that we had talked about eating dinner together).

Raul and I struggled through this moral dilemma, not wanting to hurt this poor man´s feeling, but not looking forward to eating with a man that we cannot understand and who basically looks, smells, and acts homeless. All of the workers in the hostel begged us not to go, telling us that he was crazy and that it would be a very bad idea to leave the residence´s confines with him. A very, very bad idea....

And so, with a heavy conscience, we invited the man to a beer and explained that we had an emergency meeting with the staff, and would be unable to join him for dinner. His face betrayed his disappointment, and my heart sank....

There is something ridiculously tragicomic about this whole scene. In one way, I find it hilarious that I stuck my foot in my mouth in such a big way as to make plans without even knowing that I was doing so. In another way, I feel terrible for having raised the hopes of a very sad and lonely man.

Since this incident, I ask Paco to repeat everything at least twice, always frightened that I´m agreeing to some crazy plan while having no idea that I´m doing so....And that´s about all that I can find as a moral to this story....