Years ago I was driving through Minnesota with a van full of friends, many of whom were foreigners. We stopped at a convenience store and the clerk could not understand my friend’s New Zealand accent when she was asking for water. She tried two or three times.

I jumped in to translate. “She wants water,” I laughed. And since we had so many accents flying around, I put on an exaggerated Texan drawl and said “She’s not from ’round these parts.”

Inexplicably, the Minnesotan man looked up with an icy stare and said, “Don’t make fun of the way we talk, sir.” In my confusion, I think I might have apologized.

Jason – OR