The waitress and the water

A comment to an earlier post reminded me of another nonversation moment.

I always encounter a spot of bother when ordering water in  U.S. restaurants, or at least those where I live. I assume it is because of my British accent. (Difficult to understand it seems!)

Whenever the waiter / waitress asks for my beverage of choice, it is always water. Usually, they will ask me to repeat myself. Almost always they slur the word back to me in a peculiar fashion that sounds something like 'warr-terr'. Most times, we make it past all that and I will receive what I asked for.

One day, however, I was met with the wildest comment of all.

At a fairly decent little place in town, during a quiet part of the day, a nice young lady confidently took my order without any of the usual rigmarole. Feeling refreshed by the change of pace, I slipped into reading the menu. After a few moments, the waitress reappeared, without my water and rather apologetically asked me, 'What is in that?'

Flumoxed I asked her, 'What is in what?'

'Your drink,' was the reply. 'How do you make it?'

It seems my British accent turned water into something far more interesting sounding, and she thought I had asked for some sort of sexy new cocktail. When she and the bartender couldn't work out what went in it, they decided to inquire.

After that day, I considered investing in flash cards, pictoral ones at that. Deciding to remain charitable, however, I opted for placing my husband (who has an American accent) in charge of ordering the drinks; which he still does to this day.

P.S. Cheesely enough, the only time I don't have problems ordering water is if I fake a southern accent and ask for 'waaa-terrr'. When I do that, by the way, I sound like a man, and a rather disturbed man at that!