Blowing people's minds.

So my landlords are renovating. The ceiling in the family room was sagging, and a collapse seemed imminent, so they called the proper people and now the construction guys are in the house every weekday from about 8 am. Which is not so bad on school days, because I wake up at 7:30, but less fun on days I don't have school, and apparently all of the hammering must be done before 9 am.

But I digress.

There's two of them, one of them is an older Swedish native guy, and one of them is from somewhere else and does not speak Swedish well, but, just like everyone else, he has a good handle on English, and so he usually addresses me in English once he figured out that I spoke it fluently.

The other guy, the native, always talks to me in Swedish, but always looked at me funny whenever I responded to him. Keep in mind, I was born here, and though I lived in a few other countries, I moved back here for first through third grade, and since my father is born and raised in the country, we ALWAYS spoke Swedish at home, even when we moved to the US when I was 9. Additionally, I always begged my dad to bring me books back when he went for business trips.

So even though I was out of the country for over 10 years, I still speak Swedish fluently, and have only a slight accent, usually when I am drunk.

On one day last week, they had some issues getting the windows open. Being the only one home, I dutifully attempted to help them, even though I had never tried to open the windows myself. After several minutes of confused pushing and pulling and some creative swearing, we got the windows open.

The guy then looked at me and said "Wait... I thought you were an American or something."

"Well... I lived there, sure." (because even though I spent half my life in the US, I still don't consider myself American)

"Then how come you speak Swedish so well?"

In hindsight, instead of responding the way I did (which was my explaining my roots) I should have just said

"Well, I've been living here for 6 weeks already!"