Toh Cruhs! Toh Cruhs!

Toh Cruhs! Toh Cruhs!  This seemingly innocent string of syllables, I have come to learn, is the precise phonetic nonsense required to puncture a hole in my wrongfully inflated ego.  To send a once-confident me whirling, like a birthday balloon recently stabbed, to the ground Phtttttttttttt - until the air is out. Toh Cruhs! Toh Cruhs!

Charlotte hails from just outside of London, and when she told me her name, it sounded more like Shalla.  It was wonderful the way the consonant sounds in her name softened when she said it. The abrasive T's that punctuate her moniker fluffed from her lips like she had a mouth full of cotton.

I couldn’t help but tell her, as we squeezed up to the noisy bar for a drink, that I adored the Brittish accent, the Bri-ish accent I called it, weakly attempting an imitation. She confessed to me that the American dialect ignites a bit of a glow in her ear canal as well. 

I had always been under the impression that we Americans watered English down so much that you couldn't taste anything in it, and I told her so. 

She smiled when I talked, a subtle cue that confirmed that she did, indeed, like way I spoke.  “It makes me feel like I’m in a movie when I speak with Americans,” she cooed.  “We watch so many American films in the UK that it just feels like I’m in one when I talk with an American.”

This was the second time in about as many minutes that I’d been reminded of the significant impact Hollywood has on foreign countries.  The world over, people are devouring American movies with their tasty actors and sugary plots.  And here’s the kicker; I, as an American, am the fortunate embodiment of Tinsel Town to these people.  Somehow I get associated with all of that glitz and glamour. Charlotte talks to me, and our conversation becomes the soundtrack to a film.   An assembly of bubbly Japanese girls sees me, and they see a movie star…but wait – we’re not there yet.  Since we’re talking movies, let’s rewind. 

Just minutes before Charlotte told me that my dialect alone gave her a taste of Hollywood stardom, I was comfortably sandwiched between the beaming faces of enthused Japanese gals who wanted nothing more in life than to have a picture with me. 

Brah Pihh!  Brah Pihh, they had shrilled at me from a table across the room. I had shot a glance back over my shoulder at them to reveal my confused smile.  I don’t know Japanese.  Does Brah Pihh mean my zipper is down?  Do I have parsley in my teeth? 

Brahh Pihh! Brah Pihh!  My fears of embarrassment were quickly assuaged when, in unison, they all jumped from their seats and surrounded me, nuzzling their way up under my arms and crying Piksha!  Piksha!  They held up pink digital cameras for envious patrons to snap their photos…with me?! It's true. All of this enthusiasm, this photo op, centered on me.

Piksha me wihh Brah Pihh!  Piksha me wihh Brah Pihh! 

My smile in those photos must have been radiant, because just before the snaps and flashes, I realized what was going on.  I was Brad Pitt (Brah Pihh), and this cute little Japanese buffet wanted to have a picture with me.

Back home, it is always “You look like Owen Wilson” or “You look like James Vanderbeek” – always some washed up actor with prematurely thinning blonde hair and a knobby elongated nose. These are not flattering associations, albeit they are more accurate.  

I entertained an equally brief and ludicrous cerebral scene where Brad Pitt returns to his native Missouri only to be surrounded by love drunk girls, anxious to get a photo taken with him.  They’ve mistaken him, of course, for Adam Showalter.

Obviously this flattering mistaken identity and photo op fiasco had initiated the ballooning of my ego.  It was the first of two puffs of wonderful hot air blown into my ego balloon that night.  My balloon popped, as it tends to, at the end of the night, but not until it was properly inflated - swollen with a false sense of American stardom.

Following my photo shoot, I floated over to the bar to order a drink, leaving my misguided fan base to scroll back through their Brad Pitt pictures.  A fantasy red carpet padded my course, and it was on that very plush fantasy rug that I bumped into Charlotte, Shalla. 

As if my ego needed a second puff of air, within the first minute of our conversation, Charlotte was confessing that the mere utterances from my mouth transcended her from her every day life into the glamorous world of film – that my watery American dialect was revered the world over.

My ego, I’ve learned, is a balloon. It has a sometimes wonderful and sometimes deflating quality of elasticity.  It can expand, and it can shrink.  But as we all learned at childhood birthday parties, the more air that gets pumped in – the tighter that latex is pulled - the more likely it is to pop.

Satisfied with myself after my photo shoot with the groupies and my brief conversation with Charlotte, I noted that my bladder that was plumping up alongside my ego.  My whimsical red carpet rolled out before me and I followed it to the men’s room, imagining the stares of adoring patrons as I made my famous way to the toilet. 

Toh Cruhs!  Toh Cruhs! It was on my way out of the men’s room that I heard those pointed words - those phonetic needles that were to effectively end the short-lived floaty feeling my ego had been experiencing. 

Nestled in that flock of adoring Japanese girls who had, moments ago, puffed their warm air into my ego was another white man.  Slightly husky.  Bad haircut.  Largish ears.  His mouth was agape, revealing crooked yellow teeth.  He lacked all of the movie-star qualities that I’d recently grown to believe I had.  Nevertheless, his arms were up and wrapped around the shoulders of the effervescent Japanese groupies.  “Toh Cruhs!” They shouted. “Toh Cruhs!”

All nationalities and races tend to have difficulty distinguishing one person from another in races other than their own. Hence that taboo phrase, “They all look alike to me.” But here there could be no mistaking.  This man looked nothing like Tom Cruise.  Maybe Gary Busey, but not Tom Cruise.  And yet, here were the beaming girls again, excited for another photo op with a “famous actor.”

Piksha me wihh Toh Cruhs!  Piksha me wihh Toh Cruhs! 

Wait, if they think that guy looks like Tom Cruise, then that means…POP!  I don’t look like Brad Pitt?!

As if to punctuate my fall from stardom, three pink digital cameras were thrust into my chest.  I languidly snapped a few photos for the girls and, feeling deflated, sagged my way back to look for Charlotte hoping that she could help me repair my ego, which was now a soggy wrinkled mess on the floor – a deflated birthday balloon tossed in the trash.  But Charlotte was gone.  She had exited the place, escorted I suppose, by my fantasy of being a star – which was now also decidedly gone.