I am what I guess you would call a “transplant" – I was not born and raised here in New England, where I now live. I am from Maryland, and my husband is from Worcester, Massachusetts. The night I met my husband in my hometown down in Maryland, I did him the cruel turn of guessing from his accent that he was from New York, and also saying that the Celtics stunk – I really didn’t know if they stunk – I guess denigrating a man’s sports teams was my weird way of flirting (it was the nineteen eighties – I remember tossing my spiked hair, flinging back my shoulder pads, adjusting my ten thousand necklaces and saying that there was no team better than the Baltimore Colts – never mind that they had left town years ago, and also that they played football, not basketball. Who cares – I got the man I wanted.)
Now, there are some pronounced differences in accents between Boston and Baltimore - my husband and I way back in the dating game would have been better off learning sign language to communicate with each other. I would stare at him in wonder and curiosity as he would ask me impressive, new-boyfriend questions like, “Do you like moden aaat?" (“Do you like modern art?") I would make him say this sentence over and over again to my parents, friends and co-workers as a source of un-ending delight. Maybe that’s why now, married for years, we have yet to see any modern art together. (That, and he hates art.)
Of course, he had to get used to hearing me say certain things – Maryland is not so far South that we say “ya’ll," but in Maryland we do say “you all," and we say it often, and we don’t really care how many of ‘you all’ there actually is: one or one-hundred in number is fine by us. “So, are you all going to go see Flock of Seagulls, or Duran Duran?" I would ask my new Boston boyfriend back then, who would always look around to see just what gang of people I was talking to. “There’s just one of me here, Deirdre," he would say, which came out, “There’s just one of me heeah, Deeeadre."
“I’ll send you a smoke signal," I would say wearily, exhausted from trying to communicate with my beloved.
When he brought me up North to meet his family, our differing languages caused a few awkward moments: up here in New England, the word “rubbish" means trash, down South, rubbish would be large rubber things that are on fire in the county dump, like tractor tires. My future mother-in-law, who stands five foot two, breezed through the kitchen saying, “I’m going to go down to the cellar and get the rubbish," which to my Southern ears sounded like, “I’m going down cella to get the rubbish." I stared at my boyfriend in disgust – he was going to let this tiny slip of a woman – the woman who gave him life - handle great hulking, burning masses of burning tires…I was never getting involved with this crazy tire-burning, inconsiderate bunch! She then picked up a little white trash bag filled with fluffy tissue-like debris and sang out, “I’ll be right back!" (Which thank heavens, sounded like, “I’ll be right back!")
When we visited my relatives down in North Carolina, things just got worse. “Fred, mash that light button so I can see what in the Sam Hill I’m doing," my Uncle Bud exclaimed to my husband, who looked at me, frightened. I shrugged – I barely understood that one myself. “You’re so sweet, I’m gonna hug your neck," my Aunt Ethel said happily to him, and he stepped back violently, and yet with an uncertain smile on his face, trying to understand whether she was going to hug him or kill him. “That’s a supreme compliment," I whispered, happy as a clam in the midst of my extended family, “now come on and say “modern art" for everyone before we go."
There were a million other cultural differences as well – I had never heard of fluffernutter, which just amazed my husband, and he didn’t understand why iced tea is a must-have in every decent home - my parents make iced tea by flopping huge tea bags into a pot of water and leaving it steeping in the fridge – my husband screamed the first time he saw the lumpy brown liquid and cried, “rats are in your fridge!" My mother just laughed and said, “That ol’ iced tea won’t hurt you, honey!"
In conclusion, I don’t hold it against him that he doesn’t say things right. Also, he’s taught me that the Celtics are a basketball team, and some day I’ll get him interested in modern art. So, don’t ya’ll worry about it, not one little old bit.
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