I love listening to people talk and hearing their accents. It seems that here in Maryland there are many who have moved from other areas. Once I was assisting a customer by telephone who had just moved here from New York. He told me that he just loved my Maryland accent...that it was slower and more relaxed than the New York way of speaking. I explained that I had a REAL Southern accent from Tennessee.

About five years ago someone from Georgia called to find out if "The Blair Witch Project" was a true story. It was pure pleasure to my ears to hear her very Southern accent. She left a message on my voicemail that I left on there for a long time. I never could convince her that the story was false. She wanted me to check local newspapers just to make sure.

Here's one more accent story that I thought very interesting. A lady called and her accent sounded so Tennessee. I was sure she had come from my area. To my surprise, she was from Texas! Way back when Sam Houston and a bunch of settlers left Tennessee and resettled in Texas, they carried over their accent and it stayed. Isn't that cool?

I used to work with a New Englander. I loved it when she called in and order to a restaurant and asked for a large "pizzer".

Besides accent differences, there are two phrases that had me a little baffled for a while. Many times when I answer a customer's question, they'll say "Good Enough!" I wasn't sure how to take this at first. Did they mean "Not a perfect answer, but I'll take it" or "That's mediocre research, but maybe that's the best you can do". I've since learned that this is just an affirmation and acceptance of my answer. The other saying is "a couple". Metal Mark is guilty of this one. To me, "a couple" strictly means two. If a customer calls and has "a couple" of requests, I've learned that they very well may have a list of ten requests! If Metal Mark asks for a couple of pretzels, I had better give him at least three. "A couple" means "a few or more" here.

Sometimes I'll talk about some of the fun "hillbilly" terms that I've always used growing up. I was raised in the Appalachian region, so there are some mountain people terms that I sometimes use. Well, I'd better go for now. Now it's time to entertain a toddler!