A SUPERIOR SET OF AILMENTS

My apartment mate mentioned that some of her coworkers wish to socialize during off hours. Which is a nightmarish concept. She has, several times, politely declined. As one would. Sofar she has not said "oh I can't I'm doing my nails that evening", as doing her nails is not something she would do or even pretend that she ever thinks of doing. And she does not have the blatant guile that I boast -- one time I told someone with a completely straight face "I'm sorry I don't speak English", which, given my somewhat crusty semi-Bostonian or old college way of speaking must have startled them -- so fake excuses aren't something she can easily do.

Side note: in high school in the Netherlands the teachers consistently gave me bad grades in English because I spoke like an American by their standards. They had a narrow world view. My snooty accent would have knocked a native speaker of BBC English (which they presumed to teach) out of the water. Finally my mother (three master's degrees, Berkeley) had a word with them, explaining that I was reading at a college level (Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Tennyson's drivel and Coleridge's frightful doggerel, etcetera) and what they were supposed to focus on was English ability, and seeing as we only spoke English at home (and she did not speak Dutch) they needed to go piss up a rope pretty darn quickly lest she bring the matter up with the school administration. Given that she was forceful and eloquent, and represented several years of U.S. military (the Waves) discipline and determinedness, they caved.

[Further side note: The wife of one of my father's colleagues didn't like American teevee shows like 'Kojak' or 'Columbo' because the actors were unintelligible. They didn't speak English, what was that, some goofy urban American patois?]

You can probably understand the hauteur and no-nonsence authority with which I can utter the phrase "I'm sorry I don't speak English" when needed. And I dare you to debate the matter. I have three teachers ("English experts") who would back me up.

All of this comes to mind because on a morning walk with a pipe in the fog on Nob Hill, I do not respond well to a rando hollering "hey" in my direction. That's my quiet time, I do not have a dog, and striking up conversation pointlessly is not on my agenda.
Also, I am not at all social at that hour.


"I'm sorry, I don't speak English"


At least the three gentlemen whom I will not be encountering today because I don't feel like going to the bakery for the next few Wednesdays despite the excellent egg tarts and charsiu sou have an excuse for not being enthusiastically social. All of them are deaf, one is slightly off kilter, and one is somewhat disagreeable. The pleasantest one of the fellows is liable to mishear nearly everything you say, and the off kilter individual seems to have problems understanding my English pronunciation. Which is in a way very San Franciscan.
Hot and hat. Beer and bear. Clinch and clench. It's an accent thing.


Some people are not neuro-typical or extroverted.
Nor, for that matter, social.



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