Are you sure you're French?

I have seen many people over the years try (and fail) to pinpoint where I come from. I find this extremely amusing, seeing how I am a pretty generic white person and don't see what could mark me as being from one specific place over another. The crazy guesses I have heard are even funnier knowing that I have the blandest genealogical make-up ever. My parents are both from the same village in Normandy, and the only possibility of exoticism in my genes is my great-grandfather's unknown father, who, let's face it, was most probably from somewhere super foreign like a neighboring village. Or perhaps Brittany.

Among the most memorable guesses as to my origins, I have been told that I look/sound like someone from Detroit, North Carolina, Italy and even Greece. I was also told over Christmas break by someone I had just met that I sound foreign when I speak French, which was rather upsetting, although probably true. But for some odd reason, no guess keeps coming back quite as often as Eastern Europe.

I think close to half a dozen people throughout my life have asked with quasi certainty whether I was from the region, my favorite being that one time a complete stranger came up to me in New York City and immediately began speaking to me in Bosnian, as if it were glaringly obvious that it would be my native language—an anecdote made even more surreal by the fact that I had spent time in Bosnia and recognized the language he spoke, if not the actual meaning of what he said.

The latest exhibit of such insistence on my Eastern European-ness occurred yesterday, as I was sitting in a café next to three elderly men all looking very befuddled trying to master the usage of a cell phone.

One of them asks me something in Arabic, presumably about how to operate his high-tech device. I reply, in the same language, that I'm sorry, but I don't understand Arabic very well.

Old man #1 (in English): You're not Lebanese?
Me: No, I'm from France.
Old Man #2: I really thought you were Lebanese. Are you sure you're French?
Me: Erm, yes, I'm pretty sure.
Old Man #1: You look Eastern European. I think you're part Eastern European and you just don't know it.

Well, I can't fight that argument now, can I?

I have no idea what in me so clearly screams "Budapest" or "Zagreb," but I am truly starting to believe that the thought of a French person speaking decent English sounds so implausible that the possibility that I might be delusional about my origins seems a likelier option.