Why You Speak No English?

Lately, this embarrassing thing has been happening to me while traveling. 

When I go to another country, and they don't speak English, I think they're joking. 

Or if it's a country like England or Scotland and I hear their accents, I just think it's a good act.

I'm going to blame COVID for this one. Not the Long COVID, but the lack of exposure to travel for the last three years. Even when I went upstate for the first time post lockdowns, that whole change of scenery felt like a stage set.

The language/accent conundrum is a mental and musical one. Like someone put in the wrong soundtrack to my life and the correct one is still sitting in back of the glove compartment. The physical manifestation of this is an equally stupid sense that no matter how far I travel, I still think I'm in Kansas Brooklyn.

The physical delusion is a truly baffling one. Where exactly do I think I'm going when I sit 9 hours in a tube in the sky? Why is it that no matter the destination, I still feel like I'm standing at the cross streets of Flatbush and 7th Ave? 

Maybe it's an emotional resistance to changes in my environment, so my perception has to break the news slowly to me. Because eventually it does subside, both the language problem and, the Brooklyn. Smells usually help to ground my new environment (fewer places smell worse than New York City). As for the language barrier, I truly appreciate not understanding what's going on around me, a welcomed respite from the constant sonic torture of people talking in NYC.

The phenomenon has yet to subside after 6+ countries in the last year. I would feel better if I learned that this were some kind of symptom of having lived in NYC for too long; an ailment that could be remedied by living elsewhere. 

But I'm hoping it's not a permanent state. I feel utterly ridiculous.