I have a third eye on my forehead

I have a third eye on my forehead.   I don’t know where it came from, or when.  I haven’t even seen it.  But I know it shows up when my family and I go into public.  How else do you explain everybody staring at us?  It’s not because I’m too sexy for my shirt, this I know.  My wife on the other hand is a damn sexy woman, so I expect people to stare at her.  That still doesn’t explain all the people who stare at me!

For real though, have you ever felt like everybody in the room is staring at you?  That has actually happens to us.  All the time.  Everywhere.  The first time it happened (it wasn’t the whole room though) was at Ikea.  We were waiting in line to get a hot dog and BAM, the guy ahead of us in line turned around and stared right at us!

Why does this happen you ask?  Well, it’s not actually a third eye on my forehead.  It is because of our Denglish conversations.  I get it.  To be honest I don’t always like it.  But I get it.  Like most people living in a country where the language is not my own, I speak my broken German when I am interacting with Germans.  No matter which country you are in, you always hear the accents of the non-native speakers.  But when we talk amongst ourselves, it is a bilingual conversation.  I speak English, my wife speaks German, and our Son switches back and forth according to who he is talking to.  He is actually starting to get more stares than we are.  I think that is more out of their amazement at his ability to switch than curiosity, but rightly so.  I myself sometimes stare in wonder at his ability to switch.  As somebody who learned a second language (mostly anyway), I have nothing but respect for his skills.

For the poor guy in the hot dog line at Ikea, what he heard behind him was obviously very confusing.  It wasn’t until after we had been talking for a couple of minutes that we noticed that he was paying attention.  The more our conversation jumped back and forth between German and English, the more he turned to try to figure out what was going on.  And after he just couldn’t take it anymore, he turned all the way around and looked right at us.  We didn’t take offense though.  We smiled, he smiled.  Everybody ate hot dogs.

On a final note, I should explain why I “don’t always like” the staring.  It isn’t the people who are just curious.  And it isn’t the people who are amazed at my son’s abilities.  It is the people who just keep staring.  And staring.  And STARING!  Many of them with a look on their face like they just saw pigs fly.  Do people not have manners anymore?  I know I was taught that staring is rude.  I am going to guess that most of the rest of Europe and America was too.  So, while I appreciate the curiosity of people in line at Ikea, everybody else needs to stop staring at my third eye and eat their hot dogs!

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