Sometimes You Just Gotta Be An Idiot

My good friend and neighbor, West, got teased unmercifully by his wife and me yesterday for doing something that I do all the time.. he was speaking to a Hispanic gentleman about some construction work and although he was speaking English, he did so with a Hispanic accent.

Kendra laughed at him, and I jumped right in…”Heyyyyzuss amigo, chu peek up my air-condichtener??” To which the other guy says in (objectively, Texan) unaccented English “Why yes, I happened by this morning and took possession as agreed.” West has the delightful ability to laugh at himself, so we all enjoyed it to varying degrees.

I’ve lived in a lot of countries, and I find myself not only trying to make locals understand me by speaking English to them with their accent, but speaking their language with the accent of wherever I was last. I can speak pretty good German with an Italian accent. I speak Thai, with a Lao accent. I speak Italian with an idiots accent that even as I speak it I wonder what the hell I’m doing that for.

It’s like my brain works against itself – the language kernel takes over and does what it wants to, while my logic and embarrassment kernels complain.. “that is not proper enunciation!  And it is mortifying personally!” The language kernel apparently resides in that brain community shaped and trained to be a senior NCO, because it says “Shut your pie-hole, college boy” and does whatever it wishes. One’s only possible defense is to laugh at yourself, because you be one verifiable idiot of the first rank. This position is one I’m so used to that I guess we should just give me the sobriquet of “Planet Idiot”, as opposed to lesser ranks.