I was brought up in the UK in a refugee household. We didn't speak English at home. So, although I have the British accent, my mental accent isn't entirely Brit.
Growing up there, Britain seemed to enjoy a psychology of both superiority and insularity, bo perhaps of an empire that crumbled.
A more European influence offered some elements of civilization. (The food got better, for one.) My colleague Stephen Shankland alluded to this improved social fabric in his commentary on witnessing Britain's vote to leave the EU.
Perhaps, though, it isn't so surprising to see Britons vote to retu to their mental cocoon. But do the Brits really know what they voted for?
Hours after the result was announced, Nigel Farage, a prime proponent of the Leave movement, appeared on ITV breakfast show "Good Moing Britain." (The two sides are referred to widely as Leave vs. Remain.)
Asked whether he could guarantee that this would now happen Farage, leader of the right-wing UK Independence Party, said: "No, I can't. And I would never have made that claim."
An ad run by the Leave campaign did. It was clearly persuasive. Farage dubbed the ad "a mistake."
Footage of this interview quickly spread across Twitter, as tens of thousands retweeted it in disbelief.
Farage, who is a touch like so many men who pontificate and bloviate over a pint and a cigar in British pubs, insisted that Britain was now "back to being a normal country."
I'm not sure it's ever been that, for both good and not quite so good.
Some in America now wonder about their own imminent election. In Britain, it seems that not everyone who answered pollsters' questions did so truthfully. Might there be far more Donald Trump supporters here than there currently appear to be?
Farage said that there was "something happening in American politics that's a bit of a mirror" to what happened in Britain last night.
He was asked by interviewer Piers Morgan whether England was now a "semi-racist, Little Englander" country.
Not at all, he replied. Britain was leaving a "backward, failing political union." (Farage didn't immediately respond to our request for further comment.)