It came from Down Under.
Growing up, the usual response I got from kids - but also some adults - when I told them I was born in Australia, was:
"Do you speak Australian?"
- or -
"Do you speak Austrian?"
Which would like if I asked a black kid if he spoke African.
I often wondered when this ignorance would stop. These were school kids. They should know about Austria and Australia. But it still happened in high school. I think it might have ended in college. Back when colleges actually taught knowledge. I think it would be different, these days. These days, your average college student would say, "Since you are Austrian, and white, then you are Hitler's spawn and responsible for my victimhood."
I took to telling people I was born in Tasmania, which seemed to garner some kind of cartoonish street cred.
"Whirl around and do the growl!"
"He's the Tasmanian Devil! Hide your lunch! Ah, ha ha ha ha!"
This abuse is standard fare, as you well know, in this country. Because competition is a good thing. And people are rewarded for acting like vermin. My brother's name was, something like, Brad Oggie, and so they called him Body Odor. Another was named, something like, Eric Dogbert, and so everyone called him Erectile Dysfunction. Har, har. And so on.
But it is not from this petty teasing that I now feel I deserve lots of money in compensation. Nay. I demand reparations for the fact that no one ever helped me NOT to be an outsider in this country. Such are the woes of being a stranger in a strange land - a man without a country - because he's white like the so-called privileged kids. Invisible, in a way. As good as never having been taught English.
Actually. I'm very glad I never sold my soul to this country.
"Do you speak Australian?"
- or -
"Do you speak Austrian?"
Which would like if I asked a black kid if he spoke African.
I often wondered when this ignorance would stop. These were school kids. They should know about Austria and Australia. But it still happened in high school. I think it might have ended in college. Back when colleges actually taught knowledge. I think it would be different, these days. These days, your average college student would say, "Since you are Austrian, and white, then you are Hitler's spawn and responsible for my victimhood."
I took to telling people I was born in Tasmania, which seemed to garner some kind of cartoonish street cred.
"Whirl around and do the growl!"
"He's the Tasmanian Devil! Hide your lunch! Ah, ha ha ha ha!"
This abuse is standard fare, as you well know, in this country. Because competition is a good thing. And people are rewarded for acting like vermin. My brother's name was, something like, Brad Oggie, and so they called him Body Odor. Another was named, something like, Eric Dogbert, and so everyone called him Erectile Dysfunction. Har, har. And so on.
But it is not from this petty teasing that I now feel I deserve lots of money in compensation. Nay. I demand reparations for the fact that no one ever helped me NOT to be an outsider in this country. Such are the woes of being a stranger in a strange land - a man without a country - because he's white like the so-called privileged kids. Invisible, in a way. As good as never having been taught English.
Actually. I'm very glad I never sold my soul to this country.