You are right, Red, in that Washingtonians do talk fast as a general rule! I am the exception. My brother-in-law, one that has been dead for many years, told me that people who were born and grew up on the Indian Reservation talk slow, and that is me. I also have a strange accent, and people wonder where in the world I am from! If they would have had speech therapy when I was little they would probably have had me in that class trying to make me talk like everyone else. When I was in the Philippines, my friend's filipina wife's family told me that I was easy for them to understand, because I naturally talk so slow, and also I use very few of our idioms, sayings that have meaning to us, and no one else understands them. Examples, are I did a boo boo, means I made a mistake, and I don't ever say things like that. Also she went bananas means that she went kind of crazy! And I don't ever say things like that. My language is pretty much objective in that I say what I mean in words that most every one understands, and I talk very slowly, and maybe my mind works that way also, who knows! I think I am okay though, and everyone else is a little off!!!! No, I am just kidding. There is a joke of one Amish person talking to the other Amish person. He says, "Me things the whole world is a bit stange but me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee!!!!"
My high school music teacher told that one. He was a Baptist. Actually I think I told it wrong! I think it was "Me thinks the whole world is out of step but me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee!" I think the reason he told that is that we were practicing our marching band technique, and he was having trouble getting all the kids to march in sych with each other, putting the right foot forward, and not being out of step with all the other class. If one was out of step, he/she could say "I am in step, but you are out of step!" He also told another one. He said that they were having a discussion in Sunday School Class about mass hypnotism. That was in the 1960s when a hypnotist would attempt to hypnotise entire audiences. Anyway they were talking about mass hypnotism, and this one elderly gentleman spoke up and said, "What will those Catholics think of next!!!!" He confused the observance of Mass Celebration with the Catholics, with the word mass, meaning a large group of people!