¿Podría jugar con tus pelotas?

Um, can I play with your balls?

Yeah, I suppose that sounds dirty in English, too, now that I think about it.

Because it certainly sounds dirty in Spanish, or so I found out when my professor laughed in my face as I said the title of this post in one of my classes as an example of how to use ¿Podría? properly. For the record, my sentence is grammatically correct. It’s just not, um, that logical, as it were, within the premise of my imagined situation — being at the tennis court and needing to borrow someone’s balls, ahem, tennis balls, perv.

Anyway, turns out in that situation, it’d be better to say, “las pelotas” (the balls), but whatever. Making things awkward is my specialty and it’s a little bit complimentary that I can suddenly do that in Spanish. Now I just need to find some tennis courts. I’m coming for your balls.

And, in fact, I’m thinking of turning the awk-factor up a notch by bringing a street dog with me: ¿Podría mi perro poner tus pelotas en su boca? Si? Bueno? Gracias!