If speaking more than one language is cool, speaking many languages is a superpower.

That’s not just because of all the doors it opens for you across the world, and all the people you can communicate with.

It also means you can understand when people are saying things in another language to be secretive, thinking no one else can hear.

And, as the woman in this story showed, it also gives you the wonderful ability to reveal that you knew what they were saying all along.

Read on to find out what happened here.

Hospital roommate called me ugly, I shut her up

When I was a sophomore in college, my appendix ruptured and I spent a couple weeks in the hospital off and on dealing with various infections and surgery.

During my first hospital stay, I shared a room with an older Russian woman who had just had a gastric bypass.

I never said a word to her, and just kind of kept to myself watching TV and chatting with my mom when she came to visit.

I felt kind of bad that I had to walk my IV pole past her to use the bathroom because I didn’t want to disturb her, so I tried to be as quiet as possible and limit the number of trips I made.

But this older woman wasn’t anywhere near as polite.

This lady had the habit of talking really loudly on the phone to her daughter, and since she’d heard me speaking English with my mom, I guess she assumed that I couldn’t understand her.

I had started learning Russian as a freshman so I didn’t understand everything she was saying, but I could gather bits and pieces.

One night she’s on the phone with her daughter and she says something to the tune of “I don’t have the room to myself anymore, I’m sharing it with this girl and she’s really ugly.”

Yikes! Let’s see how the younger woman got her own back.

Obviously I didn’t look great because I had a ruptured appendix and was just trying to stay alive at that point, and I didn’t really care what she thought of me, it just irked me that she thought it was ok to talk trash about me to her daughter in front of me just because she thought I couldn’t understand her.

Plus, I was bored and wanted the satisfaction of making her eat her words.

So the next time I was wheeling my IV pole past her to use the bathroom, I put on my sweetest smile and said «Извините» (polite excuse me) in my best Russian accent.

She didn’t say anything to me, but she never called her daughter again while I was there because she knew I could understand every mean word.

Sometimes these perceived language barrier situations are the best.

It was so rude of the older woman to say such mean things about the younger woman in any situation, but behind her back and while she’s in hospital is especially cruel.

If only we could all bear witness to the look on the older woman’s face.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person shared a similar experience.

While others remembered second-language speakers being proactively gracious.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought this was a lesson to be taught young.

Even when you’re sure you’re the only speaker of your language nearby, it always pays to be cautious.

After all, languages are an important currency around the world, so it follows that plenty of people are keen to learn them.

And you never want to be at the wrong end of that surprise.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.