I don’t know if I’ve been doing this all my life but I just had an 11 year old point out to me that if I’m speaking to a person with an accent, I start speaking with an accent. Like Madonna. I am horrified and partly fascinated by this. Horrified, well, for obvious reasons. But fascinated too because I have absolutely no awareness that I’m doing it. It’s almost like there is a new side of me I never knew about, like finding out I can speak Portuguese or that I have a long lost twin who was raised in South Africa with my long lost real father.
“Do I bat my eyes when I do it?
What?
Like this.
Ew no.
That’s what Madonna does when she talks in a bloody English accent.
What? Mom! Why are you doing that?
Why am I doing what love?
Mom stop.
Ok guvna.”
See now I can’t even joke. I’m ashamed of myself. She said I even do it when I talk to my black friends. I start saying Oh girl! And with gay friends I’ll say Oh no she didn’t, and do a snap and a head swivel.
Mom you are seriously out of control, Mo says to me.
I am? But I can’t stop something I don’t even have any control over. What’ll I do? Do I need to get someone to record me so then I can watch the tapes? Analyze myself like a play by play? Am I just a desperate pleaser trying to fit in? Or am I old and this is the beginning of senility?
There’s really no comforting answer to this question.
My grandma moved to London before I was born (from America). Word on the streets is she had a full on British accent within a week. Maybe it's a survival thing.
ReplyDeleteImagine though if you did that to everyone you met. People from Asia, the elderly, the mentally retarded... That would be amazing!