The Wicked Big Toddlah

First - show of hands. Who here thinks this is a book about a large, evil child of Satan written by someone in desperate need of spell-checker? Uh huh, yep, OK, you in the back - don't be shy, hmm mmm, yep, and you? OK. I thought so.

Those very few of you who did not raise your hands likely fit one of the following criteria: A. You were born and raised in New England. B. You lived a significant length of time in New Hampshire or Maine. C. You watched Saturday Night Live when Adam Sandler and/or Jimmy Fallon was on. Or D. You have talked to me in person for more than 5 minutes.

The average American living in blissful ignorance in any of the other 44 states doesn't realize that while Wicked can be an adjective meaning evil, such as Cinderella's wicked stepmother or the Wicked Witch of the East, in New England it is an adverb meaning very or extremely. "Oh man, that was wicked cool! Do it again!" "Ugh, I am having a wicked bad day." While Wicked can be paired with almost any adjective, it's raison d'etre is to be paired with Awesome. "Dude - did you see the Red Sox game last night? It was Wicked Awesome the way they pulled that out!"

Tuesday night, the boys had to attend a City Council meeting for one of their Boy Scout Merit Badges, so DH went with them while I took the girls to the public library 5 blocks over. Amongst the 6548 books that Princess picked out to bring home was this beautiful nugget. "The Wicked Big Toddlah" written by Kevin Hawkes, a Mainer. This was right up my alley. Or so I thought.

I grew up in a suburban-ized area of southern New Hampshire, and so the Down East accent was less prevalent amongst my neighbors than in, say, rural Maine. When asked what a "Down East" accent is, I describe it as a southern drawl mixed with a Boston twang, then demonstrate it by advising my audience that their destination is inaccessible from their current location. This has been the extent of my Down East experiences since leaving New England for warmer greener other pastures nearly 9 years ago.

After all this time living abroad (i.e., not in New England) it was much harder for me to slip into a Down East accent than I thought it would be. But, by the end of the book, I was doing ok and had regained most of my New Englander accent. Princess has requested this book nearly every night since, and each time, it's easier and easier to read the entire book in a Down East Accent.

Of course now, having returned to my roots, however briefly, the question of the day is this - how thick was my accent when I went back to work?



Today's quiz: phonetically render the following phrases:

An Arkansan or an Alabaman indicating that you are welcome to return at any time.
A Bostonian pointing out the closest vehicular decampment area.
A Mainer advising you that, in fact, Mapquest is wrong and your destination is unreachable.