Hi All,
One of the questions I frequently get while I am playing AH2 and using vox is:
"Why Don't You Have an Accent?" by which the questioner usually means "Why don't you have an
English Accent since you are from there?" The quick answer to that, is "peer pressure and many years of assimilation" but I figure to forestall future questions I'd post a brief bio. I've said a lot about my adult life already around here, so here are the details of my early life.
I was born in Rochford, Essex England on July 29th 1969, the first born son of Victor and Wendy Webb. Both of my parents are from the London area. My Mother grew up in Seven Kings, and my Father is from Dagenham. His family were all factory workers at Ford's Dagenham plant, he was the first to break that particular mold, going into the Newspaper Business after doing a stint in the Paras during the National Service days. My family moved to the United States in the Summer of 1975, when my father took a transfer to become Managing Director of Dow Jones International in NYC. As a result I grew up in the Northern NJ towns of Millburn and Short Hills. I lost my accent the year after we arrived (1976) largely as a result of not wanting to sound like an English geek during the Bicentennial. Both of my parents were distraught and my mother in particular remarked that I sounded like Bugs Bunny while I was initially working out how to talk like an American.
One of the bennies of having a Dad who worked for DJI was that I got to travel internationally quite a bit, my father would trade in his first class ticket, for two economies and we would go with him to various places in Europe and Asia. We also went home to the UK quite a bit. The change in accent and attitude was not lost on our relatives overseas and at one family funeral I remember two cousins remarking regarding me "Doesn't he look
American?" (so apparently being in the USA actually affects not only your point-of-view but actual physical appearance).
My school career until Seminary was an unmitigated disaster. I was kicked out of my first public (i.e. UK private) school at the age of 3 which was a grave disappointment for my family. On arriving in America, I started attending a
local public school and the administration eventually
strongly suggested I go somewhere else (since I was apparently too young for Juvie Hall), so my parents, hoping that greater discipline would be the solution to my huge behavior problems, signed me up at the
local Catholic School this despite the fact that we were not Catholic (or anything else for that matter). Eventually, they too suggested strongly that I leave, so I started attending another public school, where I did even worse (my school day consisted of standing in the hall, sitting in the principal's office and then going to detention - no joke) and eventually I ended up back at the Catholic School, until finally going to a
private school a couple of towns away. Incidentally, it was in Catholic school that my feelings towards Christianity hardened from apathy to antipathy, eventually flowering into full-blown hatred in University. I can honestly say though, that I never once heard or observed anything even approximating the biblical gospel in school.
Anyway, to make a long story short, after graduation, I applied for and was accepted to
the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland which thankfully didn't look at my behavior records from my prior schooling. I graduated from St. As with an MA in 1991 - it would have been 1990 but I failed a final by deciding that getting really, really hammered was much more important than studying . There I majored in traveling, and killing brain-cells and minored in the classes I was supposed to be attending. After graduation I moved back to the USA, started work in advertising in NYC, first with
my dad's company and then a Madison Ave Ad Co (copy writing and selling and buying ad space). Eventually my wife to be and I got engaged and we moved to Washington D.C. where we both ended up working in
computers. I was converted in 1993 and moved to Philadelphia in 1997 to begin attending
seminary full time.
I graudated from WTS with my M.Div in 2001 received 2 calls and eventually took one to plant a church here in Fayetteville, NC. By God's grace the plant was a success and became a
particular church in 2005.
Here is my ugly mug back when I had hair (as opposed to just back hair) in 1994 from an old passport:
BTW, an interesting factoid is that politically, our family is almost universally socialist in leaning (big surprise eh?). My Uncle Harry was a union organizer at the Ford's Works for most of his life and went on to become a Labor Councilor for Rainham/Havering:
http://www.havering.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=4039So there it is... Why I don't have an accent and stuff...
- SEAGOON
