Tuesday, September 1, 2009

You Have An Accent

I sometimes do crazy things like going out to dinner with a group of total strangers. This is to keep me from becoming a hermit during “between contract” period, and make me feel somewhat normal. You know, human interaction and all.

This is one of those gatherings where I picked up a lady from the same group and drove into the city for dinner and fireworks. The traffic was awful, and it didn’t help with her “you should’ve parked there,” or “you should’ve taken that lane,” as a side seat driver. But I made the bet effort not to say anything rude.

She was from another country and, in spite of having lived here for decades, still has a heavy accent. She was quite loud as well. I thought to myself, “Good for her. She didn’t think her accent was anything to be ashamed of.”

A guy from a different group joined us after dinner and got into lively chatters with us. Barely a minute or two into the conversation the woman with an accent announced loudly, “You have an accent!”

The ice tea I was drinking almost shot out of my nostrils. He did have a slight accent – he’s from New York.

She showed me again how easy it is to look at others but not oneself. I’m pretty sure I have done the same.

4 comments:

  1. great story my husband has an accent too and me too I am from Virginia and he is from Morocco he thinks no one can understand him but it's not that bad he just uses the Queens English.

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  2. A 3?!? so you didnt like the bikinis? or was it because you took better nature shots?
    Oh wait this is to comment on your post huh. umm nice post :)
    lol so you didnt like the biki(smack)
    :D Well being from boston and not having an accent I get the comments from people asking where I am from. Dammit I from here.
    I think I'll move to alabama and start sayin y'all to everyone ,)

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  3. Maybe... but that woman sure sounds annoying! :-)

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  4. Sarah, this is my favorite posts so far. I am sorry, I am still laughing. But what happened, happens all the time.

    You didn't mention what country she was from so I do not know what type of an accent she had. However, I will say that people from other countries usually think everyone in America talks the same. But we don't. Even if you were born and raised in the U.S. you know people from the North, South, East and Midwest all speak with different accents. Now all you need to do is put all that in together with our melting pot of different nationalties and we really confuse people. LOL!

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