#hellfire hellfire hellfire

So I’ve got a pretty good grip of English, yeah? But most of the English I’ve been exposed to, being from Montreal and all, is some variation of North American English. 

Unfortunately for me, I am not in North America, but in England. And although I’ve started to get used to the accent, there are moments. Either the environment is very noisy, or the other person mumbles a lot, of maybe they’ve got like a super strong regional accent or something (maybe they’re australian; I still can’t always tell them apart from english people with a very strong accent).

Whatever the reason, they are speaking to me and I only understand one sentence out of three.

Then comes the moments. It’s at a point in a conversation when I’ve already exhausted the allotted numbers of time I can ask them to repeat what they’ve just said without being offensive or annoying. So even when I don’t understand a sentence I just nod with a little vacant smile, go “mh-hm” and invest all my mental resources in trying to understand what the hell they are going on about.

There’s a silence. They are looking at me expectantly. I realize they’ve just ask me a question.

Shit.

Two choices: I ask them to repeat themselves once more, or I take a wild guess and try to provide some kind of answer that will hopefully match their question.

Hint: I make terrible decisions under pressure.

Panicked, I go for option no2. I hazard a wobbly “yeah....and you?” and pray very hard for the gods to teleport me 5 miles away from here.

More silence. I can see in their face that my answer did not match their question.

They were asking me to do something.