Anglophiliac

I bought a DVD last week.

I might buy a couple more this week, thanks to Amazon.com's fantabulous eBay-like Marketplace. Why does this merit a post? Let's backtrack.

Monday morning I received a tongue-in-cheek email from a gentleman of my acquaintance, wherein he stated:

First off, don't think I didn't notice the anglophiliac spelling of "apologise." That shit's got to stop! Good old fashioned American Zs are perfectly charismatic.

Passing it on to an editor pal, I got the response:

Amen sister! And PLEASE listen to him re: z versus s. You are an American, baby. Sad but true.

Yes, yes, I know: I spell it 'apologise' and 'surprise.' Over two years spent trying to memorise (see?) British spelling, and these are the lasting remnants. While I realise (yup) that it's pretentious to spell things with extra 'u's, such as 'colour' and, um...'glamour' (er), I don't notice myself the difference between 'surprize' and 'surprise.' Perhaps it's because I consume such a steady diet of British books, from classics like Tristram Shandy to Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I remember being stunned to find out there were so many words spelled with 's's in Britain, since it had never registered before as anything out-of-the-ordinary.

I'm not trying to be pretentious. I'm just trying to be different, to hold on to something that I feel I'm slowly losing a part of: my anglophilia and my wish to live abroad. In a twisted way, I think the instant I start spelling things with 'z's is the instant I give up on all dreams to live in places where they use 's's in daily life. It doesn't make sense, truly, but it's how I feel. For the same reason, I shyed away from buying videotapes or DVDs after I got back from Britain each time. They're in a different DVD region than us, and in my own silly mind I thought that were I to amass a collection of DVDs here in the U.S., that would mean I committed to staying here forever. Of course I now have a laptop that can play American DVDs anywhere, and it's not as if I couldn't finagle an adaptor or a dual-region player were I to move abroad. But, as I stated, it's how I feel. And who said feelings are logical?

I crave being different (but not too different, hence why Europe is such a lure). I'm not. In fact, I'm less special than most people in Chicago, since I grew up in Illinois. That's why I feel a burning need to tell people I'm from a farm; it sets me apart from the hordes of Michigan and Indiana suburbanites.

Someone on a study abroad mailing list I'm on wrote this recently, which is a perfect finish to my repetitious thoughts:

Apologies to those who've heard this song from me before. But, it's a nice tune and every once in a while I like to take it out and play it.

The end.