I spoke "southern" on the phone with the bank to be more endearing to the representative at the same time being conferenced in on the phone with someone from the church who was helping with account information I didn't know and had never heard me speak that way.
Recently the discussion has been brought up as to why I do not have a southern accent and am from the south. I told my friends that I dropped it but could pull it out whenever it is needed or if I hang around my family for any length of time. Then of course they asked why I dropped it and here is my story....
I told them about the time I heard my dad's voice on a recorded tape. I questioned him and said it sounded nothing like him and how did he change his voice. He said that he had a business trip to take up in NY and he knew he would not be taken as serious of his accent was as strong as it was. I liked the way he sounded then and much preferred it over the recorded voice from years earlier. If he could drop it so could I. It wasn't then that I decided to drop it. That decision came a few years later.
As I was exiting high school, there were some close friends of mine that picked on certain words I said. Certain words sounded very 'southern'. I lived in Georgia, hello!?!?! After meeting Dustin and knowing deep down we would be married one day, I decided I didn't want my children to have a super thick southern accent. Lord help them if we both sounded like Dustin! So somewhere as we were courting, I slowly dropped it.
This last Friday, Dustin had pulled out our wedding video from over 10 years ago. When I heard my voice, it took my breath away. Look what I had done! My heart sank a little. Why was I so set on dropping it? There was one clip from when I was saying my vows that we played over and over..."to be my husband" Dustin said then that he wished I never dropped it. Man!
So, this morning someone from the church needed me to call BB&T and get our login reset. (for those of you who do not know, BB&T is based in North Carolina) For some reason we had been locked out. I was one of the original people on the account 6 years ago but of course, I haven't had anything to do with the finances once the church grew long enough to have volunteers do it. It doesn't look great to see the pastor's wife in the corner counting money and preparing deposit slips. For some reason the person who called this morning wasn't able to get past all of the automated steps to reset the password and was on the phone for 20 minutes with a rep and still wasn't able to make progress. I called and turned my accent on in a jiffy. The lady was very nice and I talked very slow and sweet. She needed to know some account info that I hadn't messed with in over 4 years so I conferenced in my friend who had asked me to call them in the first place. I talked as southern as I could get. Turns out, my friend had just as many rights with that account as I do but when he called they didn't give him any info. I called, answered the same questions and our account was unlocked AND we didn't even need the password reset.
I attribute it to my southern accent. Maybe she would have given it to me if I talked as a Marylander, maybe not BUT boy did I have fun chatting with her today and now my friend can tell my other friends that I do speak Southern.
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