You Got a Foreign Accent

Today, after an unforgiving sprint across the Charlotte Airport to catch my flight back to Virginia, I walked across the sunny tarmac to the tiny plane. An airline worker in a fluroescent vest led me there, a tall man with a broad smile and kind eyes.

“Where you from?” he inquired.

“Atlanta,” I tried, but it came out with a question mark.

“Naw,” he insisted, “That’s no Southern accent, that’s something else. You really from Atlanta?”

“Sure,” I said, unconvincingly.

“You got a foreign accent,” he announced, going all Sherlock Holmes, “I know you better than you know yourself” on me.

“I do live in Germany,” I said, as we reached the plane.

“See!” he said, jubliant.

I boarded the plane feeling irked: not with the man, but with myself. How the hell did I get a foreign accent? My casual Southern lilt clearly wasn’t cutting it: I needed to go nuclear. Start “yes ma’am-ing” everybody and inserting pimento cheese into more conversations.

In other news, I’m fairly certain the stewardess, who slurred through the safety instructions, was as drunk as a skunk.