i am not a fob. i was born in baltimore and have spoken in english since i was five. i read 100 books in the first grade and got an award for it. i would say that on my personal set of skills, writing and speaking are close to the top.
however, there is a parenthesis. my childhood was a bit anomalous and disconnected from the average american kid growing up in the average american household because even though my parents spoke english, they didn't speak american. no colloquialisms, no idioms, no curse words, nothing outside a grammar textbook. i grew up and never knew what not being able to sing "my way out of a wet paper sack" meant or that "a penny for your thoughts" was another way of asking what was on my mind. i still have no idea what "no harm, no foul" means or from where "the peanut gallery" derives. in addition, my parents made up their own idioms, which i grew up thinking made perfect sense. if you've ever heard "i was crying like a tiger", it means that at some point, you cried really hard. credit my pops for that one.
and even though i am now deeply immersed in american culture, this gap still makes for some awkward moments. i have tried to incorporate them more into my semantics as i've gotten older, but most of the time, i use them the wrong way or get them half wrong. for example, i described someone the other day as being smart as "a bag of hair". and another time, i was describing something and said it reminded me of "johnny go lightly".
well, now you know, i'm not PERFECT.
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