The Stranger in Me

"South Boston, huh? You ever see Whitey?"
"Ha, no, never."
"You know who I'm talking about, right?"
"Of course, I do. Whitey Bulger. I'd be set if I saw him."
"You and me both."

This is a weird phenomenon, even for myself, but get me talking to some hardened Lowell cabbie and suddenly, I've got this accent from I don't know where and we're musing about Whitey. I don't even put on a Boston accent, 'cause that's not where I'm from, but I say Chelmsfuhd instead of Chelmsford, and talk about unions, laugh about turkeys, and remark on how the neighborhoods have changed.

In Scotland, it only took me two weeks to adopt and then drop the local intonations. In Taiwan, in Boston, I don't try to talk in a way that fits in, I don't shirk from using the vocabulary and sarcasm that defines me, I stand by and stand out by my words. But get me close to home and talking with locals who've been there all their lives and I start talking like someone I'm not, but a character I've studied for fifteen years. I don't know why, maybe I'm being patronizing and think he'd find Regular Me too removed from his world, maybe I'm compensating because I know how xenophobic old timers are, or maybe, it's just fun to feel like a native sometime.