Curious....
Jul. 13th, 2005 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteWhen you wander around the city of Boston and it's surrounding suburbs with the general air of someone not utterly and hopelessly lost, you very quickly get used to random people stopping to ask you questions. Any sort of question, honestly, from how to get somewhere to where to park to what brand of shoes you're wearing. It's not something I mind at all; I'm quite fond of talking to strangers most of the time, and I like being helpful.
Today, in the interests of not having my back freeze into an even more solid slab of pain, I decided to try to take a short walk into the town square - it's not very far, and there are plenty of places along the way to pause and sit down, and the inside of my house was rapidly going from 'safe comfy home-space' to 'mind-numbing trap.' So I made my slow-but-steady way there, and was happily meandering down the main thoroughfare when a random lady called out to me, obviously spotting the 'Native Guide' sign hanging above my head in midair. Instead of the usual 'excuse me,' or 'hey, gotta minute,' or suchlike, though, I found myself being hollered at, 'Hey, hey, you, hey, do you speak English?'
For those of you who may not have met me in real life, or might assume that the picture attatched to this journal is a random one I stole, I'm.... um, about as white as a hearty glass of skim milk, except for the excessive freckleage scattered across my arms, shoulders, face, and everything else, and my hair is new-penny copper. I am so un-ethnic it hurts. I wasn't even dressed in anything eccentric, for once, due to the fact that bending to put on anything other than a slip-on sundress is beyond me at this point.
What on earth else would she expect me to speak? Gaelic?
Of course, I answered politely, and tried to help answer her question, which turned out to be more of a desire to gripe to a local about the fact that the wording on the parking sign was unclear to her, but the desire to respond in Elvish was nigh-overwhelming....
Today, in the interests of not having my back freeze into an even more solid slab of pain, I decided to try to take a short walk into the town square - it's not very far, and there are plenty of places along the way to pause and sit down, and the inside of my house was rapidly going from 'safe comfy home-space' to 'mind-numbing trap.' So I made my slow-but-steady way there, and was happily meandering down the main thoroughfare when a random lady called out to me, obviously spotting the 'Native Guide' sign hanging above my head in midair. Instead of the usual 'excuse me,' or 'hey, gotta minute,' or suchlike, though, I found myself being hollered at, 'Hey, hey, you, hey, do you speak English?'
For those of you who may not have met me in real life, or might assume that the picture attatched to this journal is a random one I stole, I'm.... um, about as white as a hearty glass of skim milk, except for the excessive freckleage scattered across my arms, shoulders, face, and everything else, and my hair is new-penny copper. I am so un-ethnic it hurts. I wasn't even dressed in anything eccentric, for once, due to the fact that bending to put on anything other than a slip-on sundress is beyond me at this point.
What on earth else would she expect me to speak? Gaelic?
Of course, I answered politely, and tried to help answer her question, which turned out to be more of a desire to gripe to a local about the fact that the wording on the parking sign was unclear to her, but the desire to respond in Elvish was nigh-overwhelming....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2005-07-13 10:09 pm (UTC)Or am I just naive for assuming that the majority of people I would meet randomly walking down the street would speak at least some English?
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Date: 2005-07-13 11:49 pm (UTC)i mean really, look at least as white as you and i can honestly claim not to speak english in theory :)
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Date: 2005-07-14 12:11 am (UTC)She didn't ask whether I was local, she seemed to assume that I was. Likewise, she was willing to assume that I was someone that would be able to fix her parking sign issue for her. Those would both seem less certain, to me, than the possibility of me speaking English....
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Date: 2005-07-14 12:39 am (UTC)btw, how go the green-beans? i am goign to go buy some at the farmer's market and i think dillify them either on the 23rd or the 30th... any chance of having some of yours by then?
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Date: 2005-07-14 02:38 am (UTC)We should get together at some point in the meantime - I haven't seen you in way too long....
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Date: 2005-07-14 03:07 am (UTC)we should go see a movie or something... fantastic 4? willy wonka?
also, ia m probably goignto see hamlet in teh park next wednesday,want to go?
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Date: 2005-07-15 12:37 pm (UTC)Fantastic Four is running at a barely palatable 24%.
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Date: 2005-07-14 12:12 am (UTC)Oh, you can speak English well enough. It's just your ability to write it we question. :-)
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Date: 2005-07-14 12:14 am (UTC)