Did I play it off well? How can I fake it from now on? How can I acquire that smug polyglot attitude? I wanted to be a detached onlooker, viewing myself from somewhere above, to see if I had really been embarrassing myself. This was one of those times where I wished I could abandon my physical frame, and have that spiritual out of body experience.
To be detailed and flesh out my emotions, I would say something wrong and look stupid. To respond shortly I would be correct but inauthentic. I chose being correct over conveying my true feelings. My fear of sounding like an idiot, however, took over me. I am so happy to see you and I can’t wait to have fun with you for these two weeks. I wanted to say: Oh Nana, I missed you so much. What I truly wanted to say, was not what I said. My response didn’t evoke how I really felt about my grandmother. I made it past that hurdle and now it was time to anticipate the next one. I guess that was good enough no errors there. But how would I respond? How could I come up with a response that showed my understanding, but also wasn’t too complex in that complexity would make errors very probable? So I simply responded by saying, “Da, hvala.” Yes, thanks. She suffocated me with kisses and exclaimed, “Dodji ovamo draga moja, zar si me ti blagoslovila.” I could easily process what she said. They only have one country and I have two. But maybe, just maybe, it was jealousy that rang through their voices. Sure I didn’t live their ultra cool Euro lifestyle and didn’t speak their language with 100 percent fluidity, but that didn’t give them the right to treat me in an inferior way. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around people who undermined me, who thought less of me, and who took me for a fool. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be apart of a judgmental group anymore. They were haughty, vain, and ethnocentric. A girl like that would make everyone say, “Look at this dumb American girl, with Montenegrin parents though she cannot speak the language like we do.” Those who looked down upon me were of course ignorant to the place of my upbringing. Why did they need an American girl who pretended she was Montenegrin anyway? Why did they need a girl who couldn’t speak the language of the locals without a two minute pause trying to find the right word to say? They didn’t need a girl like that, a girl like that would ruin their fun. After some time, Milena and Stana stopped inviting me to go out with them, especially when they were to meet up with their fellow Montenegrin friends.