Tony's Eye

Here you will find my views on whatever happens to be in my thoughts. "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love." - Johannes Eckhart (German Sermon No. 12)

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Cultural Differences

Did anyone see the news story on that Preacher from Texas a couple of months ago? The one who electrocuted himself? Do you know where he was in Texas? Waco. Up here, we would pronounce it Whacko. A lot of strange things have happened there, This thing in 2005, back in the 90’s we had that fiasco with David Keresh, and in the 80’s, well let’s just say, there was, my incident.

Back in the 80’s I was in the Air Force and stationed in Texas. I was looking for a post-graduate program to continue my education, but money was tight. With a bit of searching, I found a program that my Air Force tuition assistance would cover. It was at Liberty Bible College in Waco.

It was a very interesting experience, as I could barely understand anything that was said to me, and I think they understood even less of what I said.

We all know that we speak a little bit differently here than they do in other parts of the country, we’re always accused of not pronouncing our final R’s, and reusing them by sting them on the end of other words” “Ah final ahs just disapeah, but where they go we’ve no idear.” We Leave out certain consonants to get words out, like: “The house is onna-conna. We also tend to speak quite quickly, and we have words that are just unique to our area. Jeet? Friken A! Is the Boston phrase, Did you eat? Followed by an affirmative.

In Texas, the speech is much slower. Sometimes you can take a nap mid sentence and wakeup before the speaker is done. And unlike New Englanders are to the point, Texans tend to speak in some strange form of allegory speak.

An example could be: “He’s as full of wind as a corn eating horse” - He likes to boast
Or: She’s got tongue enough for ten rows of teeth. – (move hand as yap, yap, yap.) No words necessary.

Well, there I was this young man from Revere, and I was about as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party.

I made it through the program, then came the time to defend my thesis:

My advisor, James Adams, better known as Brother Jimmy and I discussed proper procedure for the thesis review, and this is where that language problem reared it’s ugly head.

I am not really how much of what I said was understood, but when I had finished, the room was dead quiet. (What I said would not fit within this entry, and my understand is that ideals can be as different as language between the South Texan Baptist and the Massachusetts Liberal Christian.) Needless to say, things did not work out as expected.


"Time to paint your butt white and run with the antelope” Which translated to non-Texan means, keep your mouth shut and do as we say.

I did just that, and surprisingly, no more questions were asked of my thesis.

When graduation came around, we had already moved to Japan, and I did receive my diploma in the mail. Along with it was a note from Brother Jimmy, it read: “You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make them biscuits.”

To me, the meaning was crystal.

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