![]() Nobody was terribly offended, it was passed off as a joke by other people, but, coming from a pretty isolated background, I didn't know that in the 21st century the preferred terms are black folks & white folks. That has to be my absolute worst social faux pas, ever. " I am from South Carolina-we all talk like Negroes there." Think fast, think fast-And somewhere out of the back of my mind, since I had no pre-made social script for speaking to archbishops about my (at that time very, very strongly Southern) accent and other dumb stuff, I remembered a quote -īut from Vernon Dalhart who made the first million-selling country record in 1924. "Why, you have a rather pronounced accent. ![]() Spotting a young man in a slightly ill-fitting black suit and assuming this is one of the seminarians in training he goes over to introduce himself-in the event these guys end up as priests, better to be on friendly terms with the Roman hierarchy. The Roman Catholic bishop of a large Texas diocese wades through a crowd at some gala. ![]() I will always remember that moment of dead silence though! We stayed on good terms, for the rest of my time in that town, and continued to be friendly neighbours to each other. We parted on good terms that evening, but without my accepting any of their leaflets etc. They were just such nice people, and I hadn't wanted to offend them. It genuinely embarrassed me that this had happened with these friendly neighbours, so I then, for the only time in my life, voluntarily sat through about an hour of Jehovah's Witnesses telling me what they believed, without making impolite remarks or finding excuses to go home. "Maybe it was Jehovah's Witnesses," I suggested. ![]() Was it an axe murderer? A Tupperware salesperson? Various ideas were thrown around, and soon we were all laughing. We started speculating who it might have been, apart from survey people - you know, using a ruse to try to get you to open your door. So I had tea with them, and we chatted about the mystery door-knockers. They told me they'd not had a visit, and invited me in, saying they were just having a cup of tea and would make one for me if I wanted to join them. These neighbours seemed really nice - they were always waving to me if they saw me leave or return and happened to be in the garden, and we had little chats over the garden fence. So after a while, seeing that my neighbours still had their lights on, I went to ask if they'd had a visit from the survey people as well. I tried to check out if the people doing the survey were knocking on other doors in the street, but couldn't really see - it was dark already. I told them that this was no time of night to be conducting a survey and I wouldn't be participating.Īnyone who's a single female will know that there's a bit of caution about letting strangers into your house when you're on your own. "We're doing a survey," said a male voice. I thought that was a bit late for people to turn up at your doorstep unannounced and asked who it was. One night there was a knock on my door at 9pm. So I rented a small park cabin someone had put on a suburban block, which was just the right size for me (but uninsulated, so it was like living in a glorified tent!). I was single and didn't like being in huge houses designed for families, but also didn't like those apartment complexes that remind me of horse stables, with noisy neighbours and shared walls. ![]() In 2002 I was living in a rural town in Victoria for a while. Here's a memorable faux pas from my life. It's usually funny to talk about it afterwards! ![]()
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