OMG I'm Southern!

Yesterday, it happened…

After many months of sustained resistance, I finally succumbed. This Yankee girl has officially become a Southerner.

I could feel it coming on – vowels elongating, as in “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii y’all”; monosyllabic words becoming two, as in “griiiiats” and shriiiiamp”, the double negatives – and the slow slide into vernacular – “I am fixing to go.”

Yes, the lure of the South was too much for me. The sweet, moist air, the pungent smell of the puff mud, the whiff of salt, the gentleness even amidst the suffocating humid heat, the abundance of pristine land and wildlife, close to nature, feeling the rhythms of the land and its seasons, I feel embraced by it all.

And so yesterday, armed with my passport, social security card, Connecticut driver’s license and local bank bill, I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Ridgeland and got my South Carolina driver’s license. So, that’s it. It’s official. I am now a Southerner.

To prepare for this momentous occasion, I loaded up into the family SUV and turned on the radio, adjusting it to the best country music station I could find, and blasted country tunes while I sped down the highway, trying to “get my head right” for what was about to happen…my christening into Southernhood.

Actually…and please don’t tell anyone…I’m secretly pleased. I like being a Southerner. It sure is different down here, that’s for sure. So different that sometimes I feel like I’m in a foreign country where I am an alien, and of course I am since I’m a born and bred Yankee and know that my homeland is up North. But, the South is irresistible.

The people are very kind. I don’t know whether it’s because they had to take care of each other in these rural communities, while suffering under Yankee Reconstructionist policies, or whether it’s just that the environment makes you so, but the people are genuinely kind. Not “Minnesota nice” with the artificiality of niceness on the outside while hearts and minds can be stone cold inside, nor “Midwest friendly” where the people all wave and say “hi” and appear to be your friend, even while disallowing you to get to know them below the surface of acquired pleasantness. And, certainly they are not like New Yorkers, who wear their toughness on their sleeve as a badge of honor, and walk about in cones of protective isolation that appear to outsiders to be “cold” and “unfriendly”, even while, as they proved on the days of September 11, that they are helpful beyond measure and would do much to help their fellow neighbor in need. Southerners are not like New Englanders, who define themselves through their gruff, no-nonsense exterior, whose veneer, though imposing, is thin and melts like ice on a brackish pond in the early morning sun, revealing hearts of gold inside.

The South defines itself by its hospitality and it seems to me that it is unfeigned. People are genuinely nice and not afraid to be so. They hug easily. They look out for each other. They know each other’s business and they care. I’m not saying it’s perfect. Of course, there are always the peculiar kinds of things that happen in small communities, where this one talks about that one and can-you-believe-that-she-did/said-that stuff, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, even when it’s private, and where people jockey for power and position in the church, on the school board, in social circles. But, you’ll find that everywhere. People are people, driven by human tendencies and motivated by the ego, they tend to behave in predictable ways – who is bigger, better, faster, smarter…but that’s just people being people.

Southerners value graciousness and that value permeates the life down here. I’m proud to be Southern...