All right, so perhaps Dad had a point all those years ago.

I am a talker. This is a well-known fact. I would make the worst undercover agent in the history of anything ever. They'd never have to resort to coercion to get me to spill; they'd just have to sit me down with tea and biscuits and away I'd go.

And I speak really, really quickly. And quietly. For a fair amount of my elementary school days, before I got out of the car in the school parking lot, Dad would say, "Have a good day! Remember to speak up and enunciate!"And I'd bare my teeth and get out of the car, and that was that.

Today, I had a conversation with my host mom's brother - I suppose that makes him my host uncle. He was speaking English (to improve his English) and I was speaking Turkish (ditto). I was in the process of trying to explain that his sister's birthday is on "yirmi yedi Aralik" (December 27) when a supremely puzzled look came over this face. I paused. "What?"

"I understood all the parts about my sister, but why are you talking about Megadeath?"

How he got "Megadeath" out of "yirmiyedi Aralik," I don't know. I'm starting to wonder if all my Turkish sounds like that. What a scary thought.