"Where are you from?"

I was born and raised in sunny Santa Clara California; the same Santa Clara Steve Jobs started Apple Computers in and which is now home of the 49'niners football team. Growing up, Santa Clara felt like a small town sandwiched between significantly more important cities like San Jose, or Palo Alto and San Francisco. My father's side of the family goes back like six generations in the Santa Clara area. The neighborhood I was raised in was sandwiched between a cherry farm, a Bulwinkles Restuarant, the Winchester Mystery House and an old "Town and Country" strip mall thing that was gutted to make room for Santana Row.

(It wasn’t this nice of a place growing up. It got pretty when all the Tech got big.)

I've lived in San Francisco for twelve years, and it's strange going back to the south bay. To see how this little, middle of nowhere town has now become the tech center of the entire freaking planet still blows my mind. They had to rip out the closest mall, "Valco" to make room for more 2.5 million dollar condos for Apple's workforce.

When I was a kid, I'm old enough to say that convincingly now, Steve Jobs was a town hero you might run into at a Grocery Store or "Weird Stuff." Every Elementary School had green-screened Apple's in their computer lab, you know, to play Oregon Trail on, but Santa Clara itself wasn't the type of place tourists were lining up to go too like it is now. That being said, my dad likes to tell a story of when he was twelve years old and was shot with a rocksalt gun for stealing cherry's out of the farm near the house where I grew up. It's now the Kaiser Hospital on Lawrence Expressway and Homestead.

Growing up no one ever remarked on my accent, I was twenty-three or twenty-four years old the first time someone asked me where I was from. I was working for the VP of Samsung R&D in San Jose and the look on everyone's face when I told them I was from the next town over. "You don't sound like the other people from here." an Indian man, old enough to be my father said, one day at lunch.

"Really? What does my accent sound like?"

He was never able to tell me, but as time went on, I started being asked more and more. I just assumed it was the Californian accent, you know "Dude, after that In-And-Out Burger and Animal Style Fries, I'm hella full." but as time went on, as I was asked about my accent in more casual settings, a pattern started to emerge.

"I really like your accent. Where are you from?" An Asian girl, with a valley girl accent of her own, asked me, shouting over the booming music at DNA Lounge.

"I'll buy you a beer if you can do an impression of my accent," I replied.

I watched her think about it for a second before she took a swing: "Hey, Mah'name's's'Ailex'and'I'do'yew'eye'and'yew'ex'fur'app'design."

It was the weirdest thing to hear. It was as if she was trying to do a southern accent but really really fast, where all the words blurred together in one hyper-efficient expression. I figured she was just teasing me, but I did by her that drink. I asked her about it again the next morning, "Do I really have a southern accent?"

"No, not quite. That's not it. But you do on some words, and you talk really fast, and it's like I have to catch up."

"Which words do I have an accent with?" I asked, still trying to pin this thing down.

"Say my name."

"Jasmine," I said.

"See! Right there! Jaaahz'men. You have an accent right there."

She'd later go on to tell me that I also had a hyper-articulate way of speaking so this only served to confuse me more.

As time went on though, I'd be asked by more and more people and the only even remotely consistent thing about their descriptions was how fast I talk, how I use big words and how the occasional noun was elongated like with a southern American accent. We'll come back to this idea in a moment.

One of the only truly historic fixtures in the city where I grew up is the infamous little mansion known as the Winchester Mystery House. A supposedly haunted house built by an heir to the Winchester Rifle's legacy, Sarah Winchester. She believed that the ghosts of all the people killed by a Winchester Rifle were coming to haunt her. She thought that if she continually built onto the house, even totally unnecessary constructions like staircases that lead up to a ceiling, or kitchens that had no running water or gas, that it would confuse the spirits.

Okay, before I get any hate mail, yes I know the Winchester Mystery House has a San Jose address, but the entire region is zoned as "the Santa Clara Valley" that's the valley in "Silicon Valley" so it counts and I'm claiming the house as a fixture of Santa Clara. This was my mothers a favorite place to take people from out of town, you know, when her extended southern family would come to evil, liberal, California. Over the years I've taken friends from out of town there since now it's more world-renowned, but I was never all that fascinated by it. It was just a thing the Santa Clara had, like how San Francisco has Pier 39.

(That's me, Alex on the left, Chris in the middle and a Ferengi trying to trick us out of our gold-pressed latinum at Great America Amusement Park in Santa Clara circa 1995. I’m telling you, SciFi is in our blood!)

"Where are you from?"

As of the posting of this article, the last time I was asked was a couple weeks ago at my neighbor's going away party. She was a tall, easy on the eyes, brunette with the type of flawless skin that sells sunglasses, swimsuits and energy drinks on Instagram.

"I'm from here." 40 miles south is still "here" as far as I am concerned.

"But you don't sound like you're from here."

"Where do I sound like I'm from?"

"Do you speak Spanish?" she asked.

I was taken aback, growing up in Santa Clara, which at the time was predominantly Hispanic, I did learn a tiny bit of Spanish but never enough to risk embarrassing myself by butchering the language by trying to speak it.

"No?" I said in sort of an asking type of way.

"Do you speak any other languages?"

"Does Nerd count?"

(I'm fluent in leet speak, I c4n h4x0r y0u2 1nt3rw3bs)

Asking her to do an impression of my "accent", she, as usual, started speaking very fast, but with almost a Latin like emphasis on certain vowels.

"Oh my god! That's exactly what he sounds like! But use bigger words like emphasis and laconic!" her brother said.

There was a roar of laughter at the party where they briefly had me speak certain words and sentences while the brunette tried to mimic them, she did a great job. The night left me more confused about my accent than ever before. Now I had a Latin accent? Wait, didn't I have a southern accent? I don't know.

Fast forward a few weeks and a girl from out of town was staying with me and really really wanted to go see the Winchester Mystery House. "Cool," I thought, "This will be an opportunity to show her where I grew up."

We shared an overpriced, gluten-free, kale, and pokie salad at Santana Row. It was served by two cocktail waitresses that could have easily been the bar staff at Cesar's Palace in Vegas, with their dresses surgically designed to show off as much of their curves as legally allowed, and their fish and flame tattoos sprawled across their arms ubiquitously to match. That being said, why does everyone that works at "Straits" have resting bitch face? I know this bit of the story seems like a tangent but I'm trying to paint a contrast between this 135-year-old house built by guilt and inexhaustible funds and the Vegas-like shitshow across the street built by having no shame and inexhaustible funds. The two are quite a pairing.

We were able to slip right into a tour that was beginning, and our guide was this cherry and adorable young lady about twenty-two years old with blond hair and blue eyes.

"Hi," she said to the group, "I'mah'Sarah'and'I'll'be'your tour'guide'for'today."

Wait a second, she sounds like she's trying to do that impression of my accent.

"Can you slow down my dear?" an elderly woman on the tour asked.

"Sure'ah'everyone'here'ah'is'told'they'talk'fast."

There, that's it, right there. "Everyone from here talks fast."

I pulled my friend aside and said 'I bet you dinner the tour guide was born and raised here in Santa Clara, that, the way she's talking, her inflections, that's the Santa Clara accent everyone hears in me."

"You're on," she said, wondering how I'd figure out if Sarah were a local.

"You know, I've probably driven past this house over a thousand times but literally never set foot in it until I got this job." Sarah volunteered in her trademark quick, hyper-efficient, iambic pentameter.

"Did you grow up in the area?" I asked.

"Yup. Well, I moved here when I was like four, but Santa Clara is the only home I've known."

"I bet you've only been to Great America once at the end of fifth grade, too, huh?"

"How'ah' did'you'know!" she asked

"I was born and raised here too!"

Yes, I guess I have an accent. What it sounds like to other people? I don't know, but I can say its a Santa Clara accent.

As my friend and I drove home to San Francisco, I pondered this concept of having an accent, since clearly, it was a geographical thing. Growing up in a mainly Hispanic area, but never learning to speak Spanish, must have primed us to speak quickly. Spanish is one of those languages that can be spoken at the speed of light, and clearly, it impacted the English speakers who grew up in the area. As I finally digested this whole concept of having an accent, It made me wonder if this is how they came up with Twitter...