Or rather, decades-old mystery noticed, then immediately solved. I was relating one of my favorite anecdotes about myself. It concerned an occurrence at Penn, when I lived in a rather strange dormitory called Kings Court/English House. (As far as I know, I was the only one who called it The King's English.) It was strange only in that you could not enter Kings Court (where I lived) except through English House. This family was trying to get in through one of Kings Court's exit only doors.
I said, "You can't get in that way. It's a fahr door." It took me two tries to correct my drawl to "fire door." I guess that's when I started trying to polish up the accent a little bit. Anyway, I always assumed that they were a prospective student and her family, but now realize that that makes no sense. We were a few blocks off of campus proper; there's no reason a prospective student would be trying to get into a dormitory by the wrong entrance when there are untold numbers of places she and her family would more likely be visiting only a couple of blocks south.
Thus the mystery and its immediate solution: they were probably the family of a student living in Kings Court/English House. This makes much more sense. I probably should have asked. "Y'all got kin up in hair?," I can hear myself saying.
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