今年のバレンタインデーは日曜日
なので…
土曜日のうちに渡さないといけない人のために（？）
今日…我が町唯一の…
存続が危ぶまれている（？）デパートに行ってきました
相方と一緒に(~_~;)
まあどうでもいいような行事ですが…
流石？
○ディバには行列！！！
ワタシも…今年は…○ディバ…
と思ってたんですが
売り場に行くと…結局？…○ロゾフを買ってる！？
で…相方アッシー君で
ばら撒いて？きました
I Yam What I Am
A friend of mine loves the movie Casablanca.
Like Bogart , he looks at me with a cool expression , and says , "Here's lookin' at you , kid."
Another friend is crazy about the novel Gone with the Wind.
When she has a bad day , she encourages herself with Scarlett's famous words , "Tomorrow is another day!"
One of my favorite lines is not as well-known as these two , but just as memorable.
It comes from the novel , The Invisible Man , by Ralph Ellison.
Here's the situation : a young African American man leaves the South and moves to New York.
He thinks the North is better , and tries to hide his southern roots.
One cold night he's working around Harlem feeling alone and frustrated.
Suddenly he smells something very familiar : hot sweet potatoes or yams , as they're called in the South.
An old man is selling South Carolina yams on the street.
The young man buys one , takes a bite , and is overwhelmed by homesickness.
He remembers his childhood and says to himself , "... to hell with being ashamed of what you liked.
No more of that for me."
Then he buys two more yams and tells the old man proudly , "I yam what I am!"
A variation of the expression "I am what I am," this line implies that your basic character never really changes.
It also suggests that where you come from is who you are.
For the young man , eating yams and being a poor , black southerner can't be separated.
His family ate them all the time because they were cheap and delicious.
Buying three yams on the street in Harlem makes it pretty obvious where he's from , but in this scene he remember the good feelings associated with his southern roots and no longer feels ashamed.
Though my own background is different from that of Ellison's character , I also tried to hide my roots when I moved from Texas to the Northeast at seventeen.
Before that , I never thought of myself as a "southerner."
And I had no idea that my way of talking was different.
Not only the fact that I had a southern accent , but some of the words I used made people laugh or look at me in a strange way.
Once I went into a grocery store and asked for a "sack."
A paper sack ,"I said."
"Oh , you mean a bag, " she answered and finally gave me one.
The expression that caused me the most trouble was "ya'll."
This means "you all," and it's as basic to the southern dialect as bread is to the American diet.
Using it up north, though <always made people laugh.
Like the character in Ellison's novel , I felt ashamed of my southerness and tried to hide it by speaking more like the people around me.
Now people are often surprised that I'm from Texas.
"But you don't have an accent," they say.
It's true.
I unlearned my southern way of speaking to avoid being made fun of.
I don't regret it.
It's important to be able to fit into whatever world you find yourself in , and , good or bad , that's harder to with a southern accent.
Still , when I go back to Texas and hear that familiar "ya'll" and the slow southern drawl that I love , I know I've come home.
I guess I yam what I am after all.