attention dearest pickpocket, you have quite a nose.

attention pickpocket: this is a personal message to you, and i'm sorry to say now that i've gotten your attention, there's not a whole lot to say except that's quite a snout you've got.

ATTENTION: One- wherever you are, please hurry up! we're all waiting for your turn...

so, have you heard the joke about this cowboy who walks into a hair saloon, waltzes up to the cosmetician and orders a sasparilla.... this is what is affectionately known in my family as "native american" instead of "native english" speaking. it has nothing to do with the indigenous peoples of the new world. it has everything to do with my own contaminated native tongue.

while home one visit, i actually said, "i'm not used to speaking with a native american speaker", meaning that it was fun to express all of the subtleties of my tongue to a native english speaker. the person i addressed laughed, brought hand to mouth in an imitation early-cowboy-film "ow-ow-ow" stereotype "indian" word to underline my goofy mistake, and the term was born. thus, when i see the italians' own oft-strained and unsupervised by natives like me attemps at english, i affectionately recognize that they, too are speaking perhaps a dialect akin to my own mixed up version of english, the one that led me to tell someone once that i had talked to a friend stressed about her trip & tried to "tranquillize" her about it, instead of saying "i tried to calm her down and reassure her" about it (tranquillizzare is the verb used in italian for that idea).

i guess the shooting of tranqullizer darts, given their kinship to arrows, is appropriate now that i've officially become a "native american" speaker.