The Rain in Spain

I have a small assortment of words that I say with some random sort of inflection. It's not an accent, because it's not a regular thing. I can be speaking completely normally one minute and then, BAM! Random word comes out sounding funny. I've always had it. Kind of a strong, stereotypical Chicago accent-like thing.

Which makes absolutely no sense, as I've neither been to Chicago nor have any family from Chicago.

I blame my father, partly, for this. He grew up in Massachusetts, with family members that all speak with a Boston accent. He, however, wound up with this strange mix of Boston, New York and something completely different we haven't been able to figure out. We always used to tease him about it, prompting him to exclaim, "It's just a Boston accent!"

"Um, no."

"Well, it's just the way I TALK!"

Well, now I have a funny thing about the way I speak. Thanks, Dad.

The accent issue creeped up again during my senior year of college, when I finally had a chance to put the bad British accent I spent years practicing to use. A production of Stoppard's "Arcadia," in which I was cast as Chloe ("She's old enough to vote...on her back*"). We performed with the accents. I was able to really work on mine and do my damndest to make it sound authentic.

When the play ended, I didn't want to give it up.

So, with that backstory, I'm awake ungodly early again this morning. I'm chatting with people and then I hear it:

"What's your accent?"

"Pardon?" I prepared for the worst.

"We were talking about this after the last time we saw you. Are you or your family from England?"

"Um, no."

"Did you ever live there?"

"Nope."

"Oh. Well, we had all said it sounded like you had a faint accent. We figured it must have been British."

I tried to keep a straight face, but the laughter just refused to hold off.
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In other news. Photos from both rounds of Fenway fun (more than those on the Flickr site) are available for viewing. Click right on the link to the right that says "Photography."

I know. Clever link title. I do what I can.