Well... I didn't kill anything but...
When I was in Sicily I went to a lovely cathedral. This was part of the reason I was there.
The cathedral was built in the 1600's so they charged admission to tourists on days other than Sunday. I was the only person at the ticket booth so I launched into a tale of why I was there.... in extremely broken Italian and horribly pronounced. It seems that you can rehearse what you want to say in another language but when you're faced with a native speaker the actual delivery flies out the window.
Anyway...
In broken Italian I explained my mother had died when I was 5 and my father had remarried an Italian woman (mio padre mogli secundo) But she died later when I was a teenager..(mio padre mogli secundo e morto,,,, teenager) then I said I promised (io promiesso --- it should have been "le ho promesso") her before she died to light a candle for her in Italy someday ... and I couldn't remember the word for candle so I made the motion of striking a match.
The lady paused a moment and with a straight face, said, in English "you wish to light a candella for your step-mother?"
It was just so "gotcha" classic.
It is my favorite story from a month of living in Sicily. When I told the concierge at the hotel she started to apologize and I told her, no no that dear lady waited so patiently for me to search for words and struggle to get out what I wanted to say, it was really sweet of her and I appreciated it far more than if she'd interrupted me. Even thought I knew it was far from good, let alone perfect, I had achieved communication in another language! . And then she told me that the woman,, she was sure, appreciated the fact that I was trying to learn.