Whatever happened to predictability?

At this point in our Spanish, if we are talking to someone who speaks slowly and clearly we can understand probably about 90% of what is being said, and we can more or less keep up our end of the conversation.  Trouble is, people who speak slowly and clearly are not that easy to come by around here, it seems.  So, usually, even when we aren't totally sure of what's being said, if we think we've got the gist of it, we agree and move on.  This saves us from having to keep saying "¿como?" half a dozen times and it saves the speaker the frustration of endless repeating or trying to find an even simpler way of saying what really is pretty simple to begin with.  It certainly has led to some misunderstandings--mostly comical, but there have been more than a couple of times where people have gotten pretty peeved ("ohhh, that's the tip jar NOT the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny tray that I was taking money out of").  At any rate, lately, as our conversations have slowly, but steadily, become more involved than simple greetings, I've had what is probably a mostly irrational fear that I might somehow, unwittingly, enter into a binding verbal agreement by nodding and smiling and shaking hands when I haven't quite understood every word (i.e.,"In our culture, by answering that question with "¡bien!" and shaking hands, you have agreed to milk his herd of goats every day for the rest of your life.").  Well yesterday I had a breakthrough with a therapist friend of mine (a very close friend) as we talked about this fear.  I am ashamed to admit that it actually seems to go back to an episode of 'Full House' that must have made quite an impression on my subconscious.  In this particular episode, D.J. walks around the kitchen table with a foreign exchange student from her bay-area junior high school.  Well, lo and behold, in his native country (possibly in Eastern Europe?), this trip around the table constituted a legal wedding ceremony, and he now considered her his bride and assumed that she would return with him to Slovakia/Bulgaria/Skrtøüljßlandia to live forever.  I don't recall how it all worked out in the end, but I know D.J. ended up staying in San Francisco, Dave Coulier undoubtedly provided some hilarity and everyone learned a valuable lesson--especially me.

bd