Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

INTERVIEWER:
Where in the South was your 
[
father from
]
?
WOMAN:
My father
was born in Arkansas, um, in a little town in the north-
eastern corner of Arkansas called Rector. It’s hardly 
a dot 
on the map
but sort of across the river from Memphis, 
Tennessee.
INTERVIEWER:
You ever been there or . . . ?

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WOMAN:
I have been there, yes. Um, when I was little . . . 
my father was from a very large family; he was the oldest 
of nine children, and they all married and had children 
of their own and on and on and on. And when I was little, 
um, I think the fi rst time was when I was about six, we 
went to Arkansas several summers when there was a very 
large family reunion. Um, my mother had been an only 
child, and, uh, her mother was an only child, too, so there 
were very few relatives on my mother’s side, and the fi rst 
time I went to one of these family reunions in Arkansas 
with all of these people who were related to me, I was 
astonished. I had no idea that-that I had these many, that 
many people that were actually related to me. So it was, it 
was quite an eye-opening experience.
But I must say that, uh, having an actor as a father 
is a very diff erent sort of family setting from what most 
children have. I didn’t have a father who went to work 
fi ve days a week, 
nine-to-fi ve
, was home all the time on 
the weekends. Um, when you’re an actor, you’re a little 
bit itinerant, and sometimes you may be working a lot, 
sometimes you may not be working very much. Uh, of 
course, these actors frequently are working at night, so 
my father would be home during the day and rather, and 
working in the evenings. It makes for a very diff erent sort 
of life experience and growing up experience. But it was 
also because of that, uh, unpredictability, I guess, um, 
for me and also for my brother and sister—there were 
three of us—um, acting was not the sort of lifestyle or 
career that any of us wanted to pursue. I think all of us 
[
grew 
up 
]
. . .