I need to stop being honest about being unable to drink and just get better at faking it. No matter how much I assure them that it's not a moral thing and I'm just as interested in relaxing and having a good time, I can see a shift in their expressions when I say I don't want to share the pitcher and I know I won't…

But what if the 'stick in the mud' feeling is imagined on your part? What if they're an easy going social person who for medical reasons cannot drink? (I am speaking as one such person.) Is it so bad if they order a coffee or virgin drink instead?

Hah, yeah my sister (white) married a Mexican guy and when alone with her toddler at the park she's had more than one person ask if he was adopted. "Nope! Just doesn't have a white father... that happens..."

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't an economic shift too (re "Japanese tourists" = flock of tourists vs "Chinese tourists." )

Of course widening and changing in hip size is expected with puberty, but I recall being dismayed at having possibly gained weight in some way that wasn't measuring on a scale, as by the end of high school I was unable to wear the same "waist" size in jeans.. but naturally with low rise jeans fastening across the…

Oh! I was thinking current accents rather than languages and hadn't realized you meant the Native languages. :) Definitely a lot of those along the west coast!

Yay accents! West coast Canadian here. My accent is generally quite identifiably BC coast (and when visiting my rural island home town I can slip into local diction as well "he was given 'er up the hill"), but my mother is from Nova Scotia originally and I definitely picked up a couple of word pronunciations from…

Really? As a Canadian I always thought the variation was greater in the East (especially given the varying influence of French and British colonies, and of older versus newer French settlement, Acadian etc.) I'm from the west coast though, so perhaps I have a poor ear for local variation.

Yeah, I was born and raised on the west coast of Canada but my mother is from the maritimes (Nova Scotia) and I ended up picking up a few of her pronunciations. Namely that "won" and "one" do not rhyme. Instead the past tense of win rhymes with 'con'.

From BC but had a teacher in highschool from Saskatchewan who said "mAlk" and pronounced Italian like "eye-talian."

Augh, that IS the worst!

Nah, not really. (As expected, it was always easy to know when substitute teachers got to my name "Ashley?" "Here!" "Jason?" "Here!" "Uh...I may not say all your.." "Here!")

Fair plan! I'm the youngest of three and while my two elder siblings have 'normal' classic biblical names, I (despite being not at all Greek) have a Greek name that people have trouble pronouncing by reading it, but which is otherwise easy to say. I've always liked it. I often get "what a beautiful name"…

:D Yes, I think my entire friend-circle was built around how good they were at playing pretend. Kids who had no interest in narratives or just wanted to play catch were out. (Mind, this method of friend selection also meant some of them weren't actually that great at being proper friends, but that only became…

Hah, when kids would play "house" at school everyone would fight over who got to play the teen girl or the baby. Then I'd show up with pig tails put in specifically to emulate ears insisting on being the guard dog. "musicdiver, you can't always be a dog! Why don't you be the mom or something?" What? But that's…

My two older siblings like cats and dogs but aren't big 'animal people.' We grew up with a dog, two cats, birds, fish and a few generations of guinea pigs. I never had any really bad experiences with animals (just minor things: there was a scary dog across the street you'd have to pop your umbrella at to get up to…

I recently spent a few weeks traveling about The Netherlands and Belgium but never did make it to Brussels. Hopefully next time! I missed it mostly because of time restraints (ended up largely in other towns in the Flemish region, in Gent and Leuven,) but my disinclination to go was probably also influenced by my…

It's pretty rare for me too (unless I'm in a club or something and then it's too loud for cat calling and so less shouting and more try-for-a-crotch-grab walk-bys.) On the street, I think pretty well the only time it happens is with old men (like 65+), often those sporting white beards. WAT. (for reference, am 26 but…

Another one who did attend school with 'Mean Girls'. I even had a couple of the stunts from the movie pulled on me: one friend trying to bait you into saying bad things about the other while said other is secretly on the other line ("but she can be annoying sometimes right?" "I don't know, she' s OK" "I know but I…

I was the same way with Firefly. Love it now, but wasn't initially sold. Each episode I'd find a few things that I felt were weak with regards to plot or seemed like awkward world building. I was almost in denial about how much I liked it until a few episodes in. Before I knew it I almost didn't care what the…