Sitting in an early morning meeting this morning with five salespeople I’ve never met before in my life, I mentioned being from out of state and someone asked where I was from.
Before I could answer, one of the other guys at the table said “You’re from Virginia.”
Which is, of course, entirely true — I was born in Virginia but moved out of state when I was three or four years old.
Strange thing is, this guy caught that in my voice. There’s some thirty-plus year olf remnant of a southern accent lurking in there somewhere.
I was impressed and told him so. Then someone else at the table chimed in: “Yeah, but don’t be too impressed. His track record isn’t perfect.”
Seems that the last time the guy pulled his carnival act, he detected a faint drawl in a prospective customer’s voice and asked her where she was from. She told him that she was from Michigan, born and bred. But he wouldn’t let it go, commenting throughout the meeting on her southern accent.
Later, he found out that she had a stroke two or three years before that left her with permanent damage to her speech centers. I didn’t ask if he got her business.
At the end of my meeting this morning, the Dutch Kreskin asked me what T.M. stood for.
I told him to take a wild guess.