This was weird, right?

[Grumpasaurus]

So I am walking up my road the other day, almost at my front door. This lady is walking towards me, and asks me to stop for a minute, which I did. The conversation goes as follows:

Her: are you Portuguese?

Me: no, Canadian (thinking, I am blond and so pale I am almost transparent and have a thick Canadian accent)...

Her: oh (silence). Do you have family in Portugal?

Me: no.

Her: I have family in Portugal but I grew up in America. I am still half Portuguese though.

Me: oh.

Her: so when did you visit Portugal?

Me: never been.

Her: but last year, when you hung your laundry up in the garden, I noticed you had a tea towel from Portugal.

Me: nope I have never been. (panicking slightly- I had never seen this lady before yet she seemed certain she knew me AND my laundry!)

Her: that tea towel is definitely from Portugal, I recognize the cockerel on it.

Me: maybe! Maybe some friends gave it to us, I don't remember where I got it.

Her: you got it in Portugal.

Me: I have never been to Portugal

Her: launches into a five minute tirade about how I should go and that I really should learn how to speak the language.

Me: alright then, see you later (secretly hoping not to ever see her again and considering buying some sort of private-fence system)!

Weird, non?

Are you sure Cockerel tea towel isn't code for something? I'd be worried - MI6 could be parked outside your house in a nondescript white transit and she may have been warning you to get back to Portugal...

I have a tea towel from Chatsworth House. Does this mean I'm the Duchess of Devonshire?

I have a teatowel that says "Sainsbury's" on the label. I'm a bloody supermarket chain. :( Or belong to one, I guess.

The lady in the original post sounds like she may have aspergers syndrome.

I have a tea towel from the Suffolk Punch Trust. That makes me fat and orange. At least if anyone asks me if I'm Portuguese I can say "neigh".

Completely barking, but almost certainly totally harmless!

I have been addressed in German often enough that I am no longer surprised. I can also say "Sorry, you've got the wrong language, I speak no German."

But when it comes to teatowels, mine are all made in Bangladesh.

I don't think I'm Bangladeshi...

I have once been told that I am definitely not half Italian - I am btw
'No way , are you half Italian , you would at least have a little bit of a tan if you were'.

Me: 'I get my fair skin from my Irish side'

Them: ' Nah, not having it , there is no way on this earth you are any Italian '

Err , ok then....

It's great to see it happens to so many of you!

I'm Spanish, but don't have a Spanish accent in English, I just sound "indefinte foreign" . So, people normally have good fun playing "guess where she hails from" - they normally go for Dutch as a first option (must ask DH, do I look Dutch?).

Anyways, there's a certain type of man in business meetings that will not ask and be extremely convinced of his own assessment of my roots. Meeting will proceed in English and, for the close, as a parting shot, he would say something to me in what he presumes is my mother tongue. Except that it'll be French, or Italian, or Dutch... even Portuguese!

I just smile sweetly. If they press the point, I ask them: que?

I was once told by a Chinese waiter (in a Chinese restaurant) that I was definitely Chinese and why was I trying to hide it...

I'm half Irish, half Scottish/South African... He was very insistent, and got quite upset that I was 'pretending' not to speak Mandarin...

Mind you, I have been mistaken for DD's nanny (she takes after her half-Austrian dad with blonde hair and blue eyes) in the Diana playground in Kensington Park...

Bahhhhh, I'm also very pale skinned and of Italian decent.

Never get any freebies in the local Italian restaurant or anything.

Ah so glad im not the only one, people always think in Jewish too even when I deny it! I am also frequently confused with being German and once had a Russian man tell me I definitely looked Russian.

Me neither You . I have dark eyes and hair but very pale freckly skin .My sister otoh has got lovely olive skin and only has to put her nose out the front door on a sunny day to get a lovely deep tan. .

I also only have dish towels with cats on them, so I must be a cat too.

I am Scottish, of Danish descent so I'm a Viking really.

Off to do some pillaging and slaughtering now.

I had a row with one of the pony and trap drivers(?) in Central Park. He insisted I was Welsh, I'm from N.Ireland but have an English accent. He was very insitent and god knows why I sat arguing instead of just agreeing for a quiet life.

When he finally dropped it he asked what our names were.
Guess who has a name that is also a place in Wales?

I don't even have any tea towels , so what does that make me?

"I don't even have any tea towels , so what does that make me?"

Someone who dines off paper plates?

Someone with a diswasher :-)

Though, as a student, very much paper plates, and chippy..

Well, I am Portuguese (no cockerel tea towels though and as soon as I stop paying nursery fees will get British nationality but that is a different story) and I have been called:

Belgian
Dutch
Swedish
Polish

"I don't even have any tea towels , so what does that make me?"

Invisible?

Dh "borrowed" a teatowel for me from Jamie's Oliver's restaurant rectly, does that make me or him jamie Oliver?.....

What the actual fuck, ipad?! Rectly?! Recently even!

Most of my tea towels come from Asda but I have one commemorating the Jubilee and three designed by each of my children.

I am not funny or clever enough to work out what that makes me .

I'm Welsh, from the Rhondda Valleys in fact but don't sound it. My accent is terrible, it's all over the place. I've got a habit of pronouncing words in full, whereas in my area people generally drop a vowel or two (which is very nice, sounds friendly). However, I have had people telling me that I must be Scottish and I can't have been born in Wales. I also know a guy who demands that I tell everyone I'm Canadian :/ ... I thought it only happened to me lols