MY STRANGE ACCENT

I dated a guy a couple weeks ago, and I think he thought I was being a dishonest person, 'cause I never heard from him again.

We chatted up at Starbucks, first for a couple hours. Then went to a Moroccan restaurant and talked over tagine and a couple pots of mint tea. He kept asking me, where in England I was from, 'cause he said, he kept hearing my accent waver, (with my ever so famous British inflections and colloquialisms.) I said, although I spent many a vacation, in the U.K. I was born and raised here. I said, my accent is a Lincoln Park neighborhood, Chicago accent. He asked me 4 times total, in one way or another. I said, "look, I am not lying to you! I'm just messing around for fun. I am from Chicago and no where else." I never heard from him again after our second date.

O.K. analysis done. Upon investigation......My current co-workers, have told me that I do "do" this. An old co-worker told me I do it jokingly, but also do it absent-mindedly, and have done so for years. I intentionally do this when I joke around, and it's usually in a Cockney or Scottish accent. After talking with an old friend from grammer school, she remembers me doing this when I was around 9. Scary. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. I guess I watch so much BBC America, and have been watching British programming for so many years now, that in hearing British English so often, it has actually altered and incorporated itself into my Chicago accent. (Having dated Brits has had a hand in this too. LOL) I can't believe that, I couldn't explain this back then. Because, at the time, I was trying so hard to figure out what was so different looking about me that made him so sure I was a closet Brit. Maybe he thought I had a schizophrenic situation going on, I don't know. Maybe, he didn't like it cause I kept rolling my eyes after he asked. Oh well.....What's done is done. Now I just think he's a dork, who doesn't know what he missed out on. And I should have told him to piss off (in a Cockney accent.) The next poor old sod, I have a date with, will hear all this blather, because if I like him, I'll have to explain the whole story behind my strange accent. (Which I still don't think I have) Or he'll think I'm some sort of a sleeper cell hiding out in Chicago, and report me to the FBI or the CIA. This I don't need, in this day and age.