Well, hi y'all

Our company acquired a littler company in Alabama recently and every now and then I end up on the phone with someone with an accent that matches my grandmother's. Actors have a bad habit (or a good one?) of listening to accents, sometimes to the exclusion of listening to what is actually being said, and then picking them up. It would take me several days in England to start sounding like the BBC, but it takes me approximately 3 minutes on the phone to sound like Alabama. My Dad left the South when he was 18 and has only traces of The Accent. For example, I say "gree-cee" and he says "gree-zee," would even sounds greacier. Eww.

I have a "moved around a lot until I was six and then settled in a multicultural area" accent, so The Land of My Fathers only appears in my speech in the word that follows three. I'm sure you say "for." I say "fo-wer." I have no idea why. My sister, Sara, had an urban Maryland accent (known around here as the PG County accent), so she said stuff like "dag" and "warsh." And I can't even make fun of her for saying "dag" because I - completely without forethought - recently said "yoikes." Out loud. "Jeepers" probably isn't out of the question either.