"Don't shit where you eat" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 04:35 PM 7/10/2007, you wrote:
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
>Subject:      Re: "Don't shit where you eat" (UNCLASSIFIED)
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>Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
>Caveats: NONE
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> > > > in my experience, true Muslims are
> > > >like Jehovah's Witnesses; they want to convert you.
>
>In 1981, I had a Lebanese roommate at college.  He was a practicing
>Muslim.  He never tried to convert me -- in fact, it was his preference
>that I left him the hell alone when he was doing Islamic stuff (he once
>asked me to leave our room when he was praying towards Mecca).  I think
>he thought I was some sort of Infidel, and beyond Muslim redemption.  I
>didn't try to disabuse him of that belief.
>
>On some stuff, he was friendly enough (he had been on the 1980 Lebanese
>Olympic team in gymnastics, and was always glad to talk about that), but
>on others, he was pretty closed mouth.  If he was with a bunch of his
>Middle-Eastern buddies, he was near hostile to me.  If it was just the
>two of us in a room, more friendly.  He would go to the cafeteria to eat
>with me at first, and then one day he spoke to some of his buddies with
>me there, and didn't do much in public with me after that.
>Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
>Caveats: NONE
>
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Maybe we should get back to talking about language variation again. . . .

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org