Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Humbling? You betcha!

What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Inland North

You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."

The Midland
North Central
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The West
Boston
The South
What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

How a written quiz could indicate my accent is pure Wisconsin is a bit baffling, as is the fact that it's been over 20 years since I lived in that part of the world, and I still have an identifiable Wisconsin accent.

As my dear departed mother was fond of saying, "T'is a puzzlement."

But perhaps the most perplexing thing about today is that I found myself saying to a coworker, "The good news is I'm having a root canal."

This is what my life has come to: The GOOD NEWS is I need a root canal. (The alternative, in case you're wondering, was to lose yet another tooth and get yet another implant.)

Cripes! From here on it, it feels like it's all carcass maintenance, all the time....

On other fronts, a dear college-era friend sent me an envelope with snapshots from the year of 1978 that she found while cleaning up her archives. Back then, I was 19, going to school in Milwaukee--art school, no less--and good golly, was I ever young. And did I have any fashion sense? None to speak of, really. And I now have visual proof that I was once the proud owner of an eight-track tape player.

It was all quite humbling, in other words. The worst part, though, apart from the fact that most of the snapshots were taken in the campus IHOP, was this: I have no idea who the other people in the photos were. None. I had breakfast with these people--hell, I could have been ROOMMATES with these people, but do they register in my cranium? Nope.

Good grief!

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