Stop trying, please.
To place me.
By figuring out my accent.
By figuring out my nose.
By checking out my top.
“Where is she from?,” he ponders.
“You are not listening to what I’m saying, are you?” she reads right through him.
She then makes it a point to make her accent flat, sometimes she maneuvers it left (British) and sometimes right (American). It becomes a game of intended deception.
“Where are you from?,” he finally asks.
“I sometimes don’t know myself,” she answers.
He sulks.
It happens so often to me, especially when I travel and meet a lot of new people that it has become a source of mean self-entertainment.
It’s not right to play games. But you have to forgive me as it’s been happening to me for the past 20 years. It’s robotically boring.
And when I succumb, I get the “Polish? Really?” face.
Then silence. In the UK his maid, plumber or the coffee lady would have been Polish.
Then comes the stream of questions I can recite in my dreams.
We like to place people, probably to either establish a common ground or to make a judgement; worth talking to, hanging out with?
Maybe I’m just road-wary and hence unjustly edgy.
I just had an idea; to create a new country for such displaced, edgy folks. Citizenship applications are open. Well, just let me know.