Enunciation (Or How An Accent Changes Things)

Attention:  This post contains language that I don't use...Except that I'm having to tell a story.

And the story just isn't the same without direct quotes.

And they use the word in the Bible.

So surely that makes it okay.

Yesterday's post about Rasslin' made me think about accents.

And that made me think of my dear friend Jennifer.  She's from Tyler, Texas and her accent is quite catching.

So catching that when we lived in Texas Grace said such words as "hotayel" instead of "hotel."  Since I didn't tend to add extra accents to my vowels, I could only blame such things on Jennifer...

Anyhoo.  We lived in Arlington, TX for eight years.  And for six of those eight years, I worked at a hospital in Fort Worth.  Two years as a nursing student, and the last four as an RN.

One day Melody (one of my fellow RNs) and I were standing in the medication room, drawing up medications in syringes and doing all sorts of other "nursey" type things.  Things that require the UTMOST attention to detail, so I'm QUITE certain that there was just NO way we were discussing our precious new baby girls who were mere weeks apart...

I'm sure we were discussing cardiac rhythms and fluid overload and uncontrolled diabetes...Or some other lofty, most excellent and invigorating subject.

But the POINT is that we were in the medication room.

And we were possibly chatting.

And then a respiratory therapist stuck her head around the corner (this was before the days when medication rooms became required to have locked doors) and said, "Hey guys, where do y'all keep your ass?"

Melody and I froze.  We slowly turned and looked at her.  Two heads turning, eyes widening...

"Excuse me?"

"Where do y'all keep your ass?"

There was a beat of silence.


"Our whaaaat?"  And we both began to slowly turn our heads to look over our shoulders at our, well...Our backside...


"Your ass!  Your ass!!  Where do you keep your ASS?"


And suddenly Melody, who was Texas born and bred said, "Oh my gosh!  Ice!  You are looking for our ice!"


And we both broke into peals of laughter.


I'm not sure if we answered her between gasps of hilarity, and gestures to our behinds, and broken phrases of "Oh my gosh" and "I thought she was saying ass" and "me too!"


And then we laughed some more.


As the day progressed we'd be working along, bustling this way and that up and down the halls, in and out of rooms.  We'd happen to enter a door at the same time, and then our eyes would meet and one of us would say "ice" and the laughter would start all over again.


We dined on that request for ice for months to follow.


Strangely, the respiratory therapist never seemed to find the humor in the situation.