I haven't thought about accents much since I was a kid. Normally, I have no reason to, but then, last year, I found myself driving across the country, and wound up in line at a McDonald’s in Tennessee. I was standing there, minding my own business waiting for a milkshake, when what I assume was a local woman said, “So, you’re not from 'round here, huh?” I was confused, seeing as in Connecticut we don't talk to strangers unless we are very, very drunk. Eventually, though, I figured out she was talking to me and answered her. That was when he daughter chimed in and said, “Mama, he has a funny accent.”

The mother agreed and then...it got weird: “Are you from England?” she asked.  Holding back laughter, I admitted that I am, in fact, from New England…

Now, I may have a Connecticut accent, and even an effeminate voice, but I've never actually been accused of being foreign before. I was already concerned about driving alone, through the middle of the country, unarmed. In some parts of the country, I'm pretty sure they have hunting season for people like me. In the northeast, I can usually count on the fact that I'm the size of a linebacker to keep me safe, but now my voice was drawing even more attention than normal. Not only was it giving away the fact that I’m a Mary…it was apparently outing me as a Yankee.

With a long drive ahead of my, I had plenty of time to think about the fake accents my mother and I used to speak in when I was a kid.  Most of the time we were English. My father wouldn’t participate, and my brother was kind of like the Geico Gecko of the family – only capable of a gruff cockney accent. He simply didn’t fit in with my mother and I who were infinitely more posh.

Occasionally we tried on some new voices. We busted out Swedish accents if the subject was cooking, German when being politely argumentative—which was fairly often—but ultimately our English accents were the most refined.

In fact, the fake voices were such a big part of our lives, they became an important gauge of just how ticked off my mother was getting. Most parents count to three when they're getting serious. My mom, on the other hand, broke out her best Queen Victoria impression when asking my brother and I to clean our rooms or do the dishes for the third time. After all, nothing gives gravitas to an ominous warning quite like a high-falutin' accent.

I don't break out my Swedish anymore, but I still arm myself with the defense mechanism that fancy accent provides. Faced with an annoying person, I might say, “Darling, does the concept of personal space entirely escape you?” or “Sweetie if you don’t quiet down I may simply poke you right in the eye.”

You see, it’s an effective but playful way of making a point brutally clear, but with a slightly softened blow. It also works well when masking a back-handed insult but more often than not, I simply use the accent to underscore how truly low-rent I can be. So, you can imagine how confused I was when my actual voice was mistaken for the most elitist of all accents.

But my travels through Tennessee had me wondering if, perhaps, after years of shameless imitation, I’d pulled a “Madonna” and picked up a wanna-be English accent of my own without even noticing. Had I finally gone over the edge and turned into an anglophile of the weirdest sort? Luckily, all my fears wear set aside when I ended my road trip in my mother's Las Vegas driveway, and Queen Victoria greeted me at the front door. If I had become a poseur, at least I wasn't alone.

I haven't thought about accents much since I was a kid. Normally, I have no reason to, but then, last year, I found myself driving across the country, and wound up in line at a McDonald’s in Tennessee. I was standing there, minding my own business waiting for a milkshake, when what I assume was a local woman said, “So, you’re not from 'round here, huh?” I was confused, seeing as in Connecticut we don't talk to strangers unless we are very, very drunk. Eventually, though, I figured out she was talking to me and answered her. That was when he daughter chimed in and said, “Mama, he has a funny accent.”

The mother agreed and then...it got weird: “Are you from England?” she asked.  Holding back laughter, I admitted that I am, in fact, from New England…

Now, I may have a Connecticut accent, and even an effeminate voice, but I've never actually been accused of being foreign before. I was already concerned about driving alone, through the middle of the country, unarmed. In some parts of the country, I'm pretty sure they have hunting season for people like me. In the northeast, I can usually count on the fact that I'm the size of a linebacker to keep me safe, but now my voice was drawing even more attention than normal. Not only was it giving away the fact that I’m a Mary…it was apparently outing me as a Yankee.

With a long drive ahead of my, I had plenty of time to think about the fake accents my mother and I used to speak in when I was a kid.  Most of the time we were English. My father wouldn’t participate, and my brother was kind of like the Geico Gecko of the family – only capable of a gruff cockney accent. He simply didn’t fit in with my mother and I who were infinitely more posh.

Occasionally we tried on some new voices. We busted out Swedish accents if the subject was cooking, German when being politely argumentative—which was fairly often—but ultimately our English accents were the most refined.

In fact, the fake voices were such a big part of our lives, they became an important gauge of just how ticked off my mother was getting. Most parents count to three when they're getting serious. My mom, on the other hand, broke out her best Queen Victoria impression when asking my brother and I to clean our rooms or do the dishes for the third time. After all, nothing gives gravitas to an ominous warning quite like a high-falutin' accent.

I don't break out my Swedish anymore, but I still arm myself with the defense mechanism that fancy accent provides. Faced with an annoying person, I might say, “Darling, does the concept of personal space entirely escape you?” or “Sweetie if you don’t quiet down I may simply poke you right in the eye.”

You see, it’s an effective but playful way of making a point brutally clear, but with a slightly softened blow. It also works well when masking a back-handed insult but more often than not, I simply use the accent to underscore how truly low-rent I can be. So, you can imagine how confused I was when my actual voice was mistaken for the most elitist of all accents.

But my travels through Tennessee had me wondering if, perhaps, after years of shameless imitation, I’d pulled a “Madonna” and picked up a wanna-be English accent of my own without even noticing. Had I finally gone over the edge and turned into an anglophile of the weirdest sort? Luckily, all my fears wear set aside when I ended my road trip in my mother's Las Vegas driveway, and Queen Victoria greeted me at the front door. If I had become a poseur, at least I wasn't alone.