Cragshire

Often people who come in, when they ask about me or where I'm from they are too nice or old for me to feel Oll Korrect about tricking them. Or they end up being from Santa Fe or they're English teachers and I want to talk about things that we really have in common. Really I need to draw people in and make them ask about me without my having to bring it up. The best way to do that is to have a fake accent; that makes people want to know where you're from. But the only fake accent I can do passably is an English one and it seems like a dozen English people came in today and they'd spot me as a fake too easily.

Really the whole reason this idea is so appealing to me is that I was hugely successful at faking Englishness a couple years ago for a shift at my first job. I was working at a Wherehouse Records and was doing an English accent just to be obnoxious to my two coworkers. One thing led to another and soon I was being dared to try my act out on every person I helped for the rest of the day.

To say that it was well recieved is to understate. People loved it. I got the sexiest eye from the hottest girl. Adding an English accent to your persona ramps up your sex appeal by about a hundred points.

The best part was when this woman tried to call me on it. Her ten year old daughter told me she liked my accent, but then her mother fixed me with a skeptical squint.

"That's a very unusual accent. Where are you from?"

My coworkers both stifled laughs in their noses and ducked behind the counter to crack up. Figuring I was "In for a penny in for a pound" or whatever the English (me) would say I decided to fake it up hardcore.

"I'm from a small town called Cragshire."

"Oh really? Where is that in relation to Kent?"

She was good. London I could fake, but where the hell is Kent? She threw me.

"Left. Ha ha, I mean east. East of Kent. Twenty miles east of Kent."

For one thing, nobody confuses left with east. Second, I was sure, as my father was later when I told him this story, that she was going to nab me by tartly replying "East of Kent is in the ocean. Love."

But she didn't. She just squinted a little harder and moved on. I hadn't given up on lying, and lying didn't give up on me. This is the stuff this blog should be made of. And it will be. I will steel myself. High quality faking will start happening soon. Watch this space.