Mommicked....

I was feeling kind of sad that I hadn't gotten to visit the Outer Banks (an island chain obviously on the eastern part of North Carolina) on my trip here, and this week, God sent me something soooo cool in place of it! (Maybe this is something only I could think is cool, but anyhoo....) So I had read in my North Carolina travel book about how some people from the Outer Banks speak a dialect and have an accent that is the closest thing to Old English. Fewer and fewer people are speaking it, but it says that if you go hang out on the docks, etc., you can still hear it.

Well, this week, while chatting with a patient and his daughter, I found out that they were from the Outer Banks, and I asked them if they knew where the people were that spoke Old English. They were like, "That's us!!" And when I remarked that neither of them seemed to have much of an accent, the daughter told me that as she worked in a bank, she'd basically had to lose the speech (it's really more a way of speaking, than an accent per se, I found out). She said that one of the things they say is "onliest" where we'd use "only." Even though she said she didn't use many of the words, I heard her say "onliest" several times throughout their visit when she wasn't thinking about it! Another thing she told me about was "mommick." It is usually used as a descriptor, as in "I'm all mommicked out." It sort of means to be overwhelmed/tuckered out. How neat is that!!!

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My patients were from one of the northern islands, near the Cape Lookout light house (otherwise known as the one painted with black-and-white diamonds). All the North Carolina lighthouses are painted in black and white, but with different patterns. I think they're beautiful, and they're the main reason I wanted to go see the Outer Banks, so I posted some pictures here:

Below is the Cape Lookout lighthouse:

Another view of the Cape Lookout lighthouse:

Below is the Cape Hatteras light house, presumably before it was moved 1800 yards inland to keep it from being consumed by the Atlantic.

So I have to say that getting to meet a sort of piece of living history was a pretty good way to compensate for not getting to see the Outer Banks on this go-round.