Dangling modifiers, being one of my own particular weaknesses, are therefore something I notice in others' speech.
(However, that I notice "there is [plurals]" and which-splices does not mean they're a particular weakness of mine. I commit the former occasionally but not the latter.)
Anyway, a DU trustee introduced the student who introduced Michael Moore. A student got to introduce him because, I forget, she might have conducted the survey of DU students to determine whom they most wanted in this lecture series? The trustee, not the student, said, "As an honors student in psychology and communications, her thesis is on [something about student activism]."
I turned to RDC and whispered, "Her thesis is an honors student!"
I maybe didn't hiss quietly enough, because I heard a murmuring of disgust from someone behind me who thought I was mocking the student or the honors system or whatever. Or it may be that the murmuring was completely unrelated!
Nah.
Besides the post office and the bank, the other semi-regular errand I did on my lunch while downtown was to have my eyebrows waxed. Which is, of course, just so vital and important. WHATever. A salon opened here, where I can get it done for 20% more but without driving and on my lunch, and with the increase it's still less than $20 so I can live with it.
Anyway I strolled in yesterday to make an appointment. I had spoken maybe four sentences (hello, eyebrows, next week, lunchish) when the clerk said, "I hear an accent?" as if intoning a statement as a question would make it more small-talky and less likely to offend someone who would have been offended. (She hadn't merely elided the an initial "Do.")
"You hear that I'm from New England," I offered, having reluctantly accepted that out here, I have an accent. "You also hear the slight remains of a speech impediment."
"I thought I heard English," she nodded. Um, I said New England? What's with the "so I was right" tone?
Is it me? Would someone who has heard me speak please confirm or deny this? Do I, or do I not, have some residual vowel-r wonkiness that might sound to someone like a vague (or, heaven help me, affected) British accent?
I don't hear Maman's British or LEB's Australian accents anymore. They just sound like themselves. I imagine being overly used to me would mean someone wouldn't hear whatever this is. But why do people, infrequently but often enough, both here and home, think I have a non-Usan accent?
The difference between educated Coloradan and educated New English is slight, or at least that's what I found moving here. People say "pop" instead of "soda" and "ant" instead of "ahnt" and the initial syllable in Colorado is a little more a'd than schwa'd, but it's not a big difference. At home there's more variation in accent in less geographical area: Worcester is distinct from Southie, Rhode Island from Connecticut, Long Island from Staten Island. But people did comment on my speech.
Maybe Mrs. Newman didn't do such a great job. Maybe my lower jaw is listing to starboard again.
I had another gyn exam at CU yesterday, performed by a female resident and a male med student. She asked if I minded if he assisted; I said no. I thought she was asking for the male/female thing, the way the male gynecologists I inflicted on myself asked if I would like to have a female nurse present, but she asked because of his status.
They listened to my heart and lungs; my heart makes some sort of splitting noise such that its beat has three parts instead of two. Possibly I have the more evolved six-chambered heart, I suppose. I lay back and opened the smock for them to do the breast exam, and she was surprised I opened both sides. Like exposing one breast at a time would lessen someone's embarrassment, someone who already said she didn't mind a male med student assisting and was about to have a pelvic too?
Speaking of which, the speculum bit didn't take long. He inserted it just a little and she corrected his angle--hey, I could have told him that. The cyst is gone, which is good; also because I didn't need another Pap they didn't use the crunchy q-tip, more good. I hate the mean bitey crunchy q-tip. I emitted a demure woo-hoo! and she grinned in complete empathy.
Then the manual exam. Unlike the other two male gynecologists, this one believed in manual preliminaries, which is all well and good, but then he spoke.
He said, "I'm going in."
I have not laughed so hard in weeks. I lay there on the table just gasping and hooing and ha-ing. Both of them laughed as well, she in sympathy and he in mortification. I'm not sure I've seen a Caucasian that deep a shade of maroon before. If she hadn't corrected him, I would have, but she did: she told him it was good to announce his intentions but not with that wording and that they were lucky it was me rather than almost anyone else on the table.
I'm pretty sure that was the most relaxed I've ever been for a pelvic. Whooo.
So. Two pelvics in two months despite the normal smear. It's my new hobby.