The One Where I Learn about People like Janice...

Today I learned a very important lesson: People like Janice really do exist.

Janice, the bane of Chandler Bing's existence, who I, being a sheltered, small-town Catholic girl, always thought was a bit of an exaggeration. It was on my walk home, outside a restaurant somewhere that I heard it. This...voice. It can only be described as... nasal. She was braying, people. That's the only way to put it. The woman sounded like a donkey. She was whining to some man named Andre and it came out like "Aaaaaaaaaaannnndreee." Just imagine the high-pitched nasal whine. I had no idea that there actually are people who talk like that.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, I discovered that there are people who really do talk like Tony Soprano when I met the broker who showed me the first apartment I ever saw in NYC (a $4000/month, converted 3 bedroom, 1 bath, with no living room-it was a real winner!) She had an accent that sounded like a pretentious high-school drama student from Iowa who believes that the thicker the fake accent, the better her chances of getting noticed by the Hollywood talent agents who, she is certain, have nothing better to do than attend suburban school-district productions of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Oh please, you know exactly which girl I'm talking about. Every high school had that girl.

I always get annoyed when I go back to the Midwest and all these redneck hicks in my hometown start making passive-aggressive comments about my choice of habitat and asking me why, if I want to be a "big time city girl" so much, why I don't talk like a "New Yawker?" Now I'm starting to wonder if I should cut them some slack (actually, nah. No slack for the rednecks!) But after all, it does appear that these Hollywood accents do exist in at least a few real people. So thanks, Hollywood, for another one of those "sort-of true" facts of life that lull me into a false sense of security and seduce me into forgetting, however briefly, just what a liar you really are.