Occidental Limey

Our corner bodega guy, J, asked me if I was British. He didn't mean 'of British decent', he said "Do you come here from England?..." which suggested he was pegging me as a fresh-off-the-boat Limey. My boyfriend, G, was not surprised.

"Maybe he thought you were from England because you ordered bangers and a packet of crisps."
"I didn't order bangers or crisps, I'm telling you it's because I look English, that's all."

I get asked if I'm from England (or Ireland or Scotland) about twice a month on average. I used to think it was because the people who ask are most often emigrants from sultry, warm places like Portugal or Ecuador or India, countries where exposure to people who look like me --pallid redheaded people with freckles and bad teeth-- is often limited to tourists; from Britain.

But G tells me it's not the way I look, it's the way I speak. I don't have or assume a British accent or anything, it's more word choice, phrases, slang; the direct result of living with British grandparents part-time during my first, speech-formative years, and on weekends thereafter all the way up to my pre-teen years. He picks on me about it, calls me 'his little Brit' whenever I blurt out something a bit out of synch with the American lexicon.

"I know you think it's how you look, but I bet it was something you said. Humor me, take me through your conversation..."
"Okay, I walked in, said hello, he said hello, he said it finally stopped raining, I said 'Yes it has...it's just lovely...I cant wait to get to the garden', I put my drink down, he said 'Is that all?' and I said 'No, I'll have three Tootsie Rolls as well', you know, from those little containers on the counter?...and then he asked if I'm from England. I said 'No, why', and he said he just thought I was. Then we said 'Have a nice day' to one another and I left."
"There you go."
"There I go?"
"Yeah, there you go."
"Okay, tell me what's so British about that exchange..."
"People generally don't use lovely to describe the weather, they say it's a 'nice day', or 'nice out'. And we don't get to the garden, we garden, or do the gardening. And then, you know, there's the as well..."

I don't know how to explain it fully, it's a subtle, underlying, uncontrollable by-product of my childhood that plagues and embarrasses me. Because even though I come by my speech honestly I know how counterfeit it seems and I hate it. There's just no way an American-born girl from upstate New York can use British turns of phrase without sounding like an affected asshole. You've met them, the Ivy Leaguers, the Martha Stewart's, that colleague who normally has a thick, Jersey accent, then --after returning from a vacation in London-- comes over to show you snaps of their smashingly brilliant holiday. Madonna. Who the hell wants to sound like Madonna?

It was even worse when I was a kid. By now all but a few Britishisms remain... but back then? Kindergarden was a freaking bloodbath. Hell evidently hath no fury like a five year old whose just been asked if someone could "have a go" on their inchworm. And could you blame them? Since I wasn't in fact FROM England (but talked like I was) what kid wouldn't want to beat the freak-show out of me? It's almost like they cared, wanted to prepare me for the larger and exponentially more cruel world that awaited, more than I could say for my parents. They thought it was cute, they thought they were raising a bilingual child, that somehow saying 'windscreen' instead of 'windshield' gave me a leg up on life, a superior air. Air, I might add, easily squeezed out of you by Timmy "The Crusher" McNeal (bloody Irish).

"Maybe you have a headache because you've been taking too much caffeine."
"Taking caffeine, my little Brit? Here in AMERICA we don't take caffeine, we drink caffeine."
"No... You TAKE drugs, caffeine is a drug..."
"All-right Mz. Doolittle. You're right. I have been taking too much caffeine as of late, and I certainly haven't been taking enough exercise..."
"Stop it! I know I say that as w...too. But it's the same thing! You take a swim, you take a bike ride, you take the dog for a walk...you take exercise!"
"Mmmm-hmmmm."
"It's true."
"Mmmm-hmmmm."

And that's the very worst part. My language is not only seemingly affected and certainly odd, but it's just... bad! As in incorrect, wrong. See, my grandparents --the ones who programmed this whole mess in the first place-- were poor, uneducated Midlanders. Both hale from a small hamlet north of Birmingham, or as they affectionately referred to it "The Armpit of England." When they came to America neither one of them had made it past the equivalent of the sixth grade. Even with higher education, the Queen's English didn't grace the public schools or social circles in their neck of the woods. Their vernacular was so regional in fact, the few times I went to England to visit our relatives I had to have my grandmother translate for me. Literally.

Aunt Ida: "Gaw! Right wisp of a 'fing, eh Irene? I fink oy might av'a tie a line to 'at 'un whywl bavin'"
Me: "hugh?"
Grandma: "She says your thin dear, she was joking that you might go down the drain in the shower."
Me: "Oh."
Ida: "'Edin' up ol' Brum ar yeh? Am yow gooin on th' booze?"
Me: "No, I'm not drunk Auntie."
Grandma: "No dearie, she asked if you were going into Birmingham, and if you were taking the bus."
Me: "Oh."

I'm not clever enough to make that up, trust me. It wasn't until the week we spent up north in the lake district (with the Navy-brat relatives who were taught English at a French private school) that was I able to hold a conversation without an interpreter. I admitted to them that I always thought Monty Python was funny because of those crazy 'made-up' accents they used, until I met Aunt Ida. They laughed. They made me feel better by disclosing they didn't understand a word she said either, her or that whole side of the family.
"Met ol' Warren yet?" said Nigel, my dreamy cousin a million times removed (which was important because when I found out it was okay in the eyes of The Queen and God I spent the week trying to seduce him with my stellar knowledge of Pretenders lyrics).
"Nah, why?" I asked.
"Oh brother, " he chuckled, "I don't even think your Gran could figure him. She'd need Ida to translate to her, then she could explain it to you. It's all 'thrup the apples and pears' with that lot, you know, real cockney shite. It takes all night to pass the bloody peas."

I end up looking like, as G pointed out, Eliza Doolittle at the Ascot Derby. People look at me with the same mixture of intrigue and horror as they did her while she told the story of her Aunt's demise: "...and what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them that pinched it, done her in." Do you see what I mean? Take exercise? Sometimes I can almost hear people thinking "Look honey, if you wanted to fake like you were English to make yourself feel better than everyone else, you should have tuned into PBS when Blair was addressing Parliament instead of watching The Young Ones"

Posted by Antigeist at August 26, 2003 06:13 PM