I'm from Dixie!

Well, over the course of the past two days, I've made over 400 phone calls helping people to deal with their glea of getting to see Alan Alda up close or the disappointment of having to sit in an adjoining theater in overflow. I can't wait until I get to tell people that they can't even come to the JFK Library for "A Conversation with Alan Alda," which is the event. I've been asked to come back for tomorrow because the job hasn't been completed and there are still bunches of people to call. By the end of today, I was starting to lose my voice. I tried at one point to go into my "broadcast" register and, put bluntly, failed. It was rather discouraging. I have thought about calling some of you and leaving my speal but I didn't think that would be appropriate.

But you're all dying to know why I am from Dixie. I called a woman today who picked up and said that she didn't have much time to talk. Well, it turns out that she did. Towards the end of me answering her questions about the event, she quickly asked, "Are you from the South?" I replied, "No. I'm from the Midwest."

"Ohhh. That was my second guess."

Over the next five minutes (which seemed like a long time since my conversations up to that point had all probably been less than one minute long and focused on business), the woman explained to me that she very much enjoyed accents and dialects. She had served as a receptionist at one point where she greeted international travelers and enjoyed trying to pronounce their names correctly. She was very confident of her talent, which I don't doubt that she has, as many of these people were glad to have had their name pronounced correctly by a dumb American. I also found out that she would ask these travelers to leave behind alphabets for their language so she could be better prepared for the next time. At least, that's what I got out of it. Anyway, this kept going on and on, with it being very interesting, but I wondered how did this woman suddenly become graced with plenty of time that she didn't have before? She then told me she was getting a new frig and was moving things around for it to be delivered. She was very concerned about the delivery men hitting anything, especially things on a window sill. Some folks interpretation of not having time is sometimes mind boggling.

So, who knew I would be learning so much about one person from one little phone call to a stranger! Back to it tomorrow.