It's all about the accent

So I'm a native Texan. In fact, I am a southern Texan, a cajun no less. This led me to have a distinct accent as a child. I could ya'll and drawl with the best of them (although at no point in my life did I sound like Adam Sandler's Cajun Man). In third grade my family moved to north Texas and I lost my southern Texas accent. Yes, our state is so big we have different accents for the different areas. So I still retained my Texas accent, but it was not as deep and distinct.

Then, in college, I ventured to the north (or south if you are all hung up on that mason dixon line) and went to school in Washington D.C. A funny thing happened there, I became an amalgamation of all different kinds of accents. My first roommate was from Rhode Island (talk about a weird accent) so I picked up a bit of her, my second roomie was from Indiana (not all that distinct of an accent but she evened out my drawl a bit), and then a friend of mine was from Tennessee (and oh boy did I pick up some good southern girl triple vowels from her - call me Scarlet I was a southern belle around her). The best part was that by the end of the year people though I was from the mid-west, or north-east, or deep-south, but never Texas.

But my homeland called me back and I soon returned to my roots and my nice Texan accent. After five years of working at summer camp around all kinds of accents I became a non-accented person (or at least I thought). To this day, if I don't mention it most people can't really place my accent*. This makes life sort of fun, because I can talk the talk of Tejas or I can pretend to be a yankee or southern belle. Wonder which one I feel like being today?

* Unless you get me excited or angry and then look out here comes the good ol Texas girl with all her long vowels and other such nonsense. If you happen to have a deep southern accent and talk around me, I naturally return to my roots in a sort of accent-sympathy response.