Ten Things Tuesday

The Dark and Stormy Get-Together Edition!

I spent an amazing – if not altogether too short – few days with my blogging friends Bo and SaintSeester this past weekend, and I’m still a little high from the experience. Here, in no particular order, are ten things that left their mark on me:

1. I’m so, SO grateful to Bruder for opening his home (and sharing his cat) with me for this trip. Mr. Chili was rightfully uneasy about my traveling alone halfway across the country to meet people who, for all intents and purposes, were complete strangers (though there are so many reasons why they were NOT complete strangers, but do I see his point). Being able to stay at Bruder’s lent a layer of security to the process that, if it were not there, would have made the entire exercise untenable to my husband. Bruder got to share some time together with Bo, Seester, and me, and can truthfully report back to my beloved that my friends are exactly who I knew they’d be.

2. I am consistently amazed that we can all call ourselves Americans and yet be so incredibly different culturally. Southern mores and Northern ones are profoundly different. That’s neither good nor bad – I’m not making any value judgments, here – but what I am saying is that it was very interesting for me, a born-and-bred Yankee whose never lived 70 miles as the crow flies from her birthplace, to spend time in the South. I’ve never been called ma’am so much. Men stood when I walked into a room. Bo got OUT of his truck to open my door when he came to pick me up. Waitresses TALKED to us (and one even came back to thank Bo for his generous tip – that’s never, ever happened to me, and not because I’m not a generous tipper, either). There’s a very different feel being in the South, and I can completely understand why people originally from one region would feel uncomfortable and conspicuous moving to the other.

3. There was a really funky mix of familiar and completely alien for me during this trip. The Weather Channel, chain restaurants, Home Depot and such were all things that I knew; the open fields, the red dirt, and the accents were all things that I didn’t. While I think that diversity and local flavor and custom are wondrous and fascinating things, I like the comfort of familiarity, too. Despite all the evils of big-box stores and chain restaurants, those things DO give us a commonality that we’d be lacking otherwise (of course, we can have shared experiences through literature and film, too, but that’s another post for another day).

4. Jeff Foxworthy does this bit about knowing when one is a redneck. In the version I heard, he starts the skit by talking about the accent; “Y’all hear a Southern accent,” he says “and you automatically deduct a hundred IQ points.” He then goes on to say how no one wants their brain surgeon to come in the room and say “Alright now; we’re gonna drill a hole in yer head and root ’round in there and see if we cain’t break up that dag-burn clot.” While it’s true that I probably wouldn’t want my brain surgeon to say that, regardless of her accent, it is true that I prescribed, at least a little bit, to that stereotype. I laughed at Foxworthy – I thought it was funny. What I’ve always known intellectually – but came to realize in a very immediate way this weekend – is that accent has as much to do with intelligence and articulateness as does one’s favorite color. My Southern friends have distinct accents and are some of the sharpest, smartest, most observant, and considered people I know. I still think Foxworthy’s funny, but I’m going to be a lot less quick to judge Southern books by their covers (or their soundtracks, as the case may be). I grew a little as a person on this trip.

5. Sweet tea is altogether too sweet for my liking. Grits are yummy.

6. While I may not like it in my own home, I’m struck by the beauty of dramatic colors on the walls of my friends’ houses. Seester’s guest bathroom is painted the most stunning shade of deep, rich blue – actually, now that I think of it, there’s a wall in Bo’s living room that’s just that color (go here to see; it’s on the wall right behind him). Seester’s dining room is done in an amazing shade of burgundy, and she did a gorgeous bit of magic in her daughter’s room with green paint and pearl glaze. All the rooms in our house (with the exception of one sky blue wall in the girls’ room) are either white or the faintest hint of pastel green or blue. I’m just not brave enough to commit to an out-loud color, and I admire people (like Seester and Bo and my mother, who had me paint her kitchen purple) who are.

7. I’m still not entirely sure I get the whole allure of geocaching, but I’m willing to learn. It’s something my friends love – enough to spend serious money on equipment and make significant investments with their time – and I’d like to know what that’s all about.

8. This doesn’t have anything to do with my visit, but it does have to do with my travels: I’m always saddened by how rude people can be, particularly to strangers (and service people). You’d think it wouldn’t faze me anymore, but it does. When I landed in DC, there was practically a mob scene in the terminal. My guess – I didn’t want to get close enough to know for sure – is that a flight had been canceled and there were a pretty significant number of people who were profoundly – and vocally – unhappy about that. My thinking is this; the poor schmuck behind the counter is NOT the person who controls when (or whether) and airplane lands or takes off; he has absolutely zero control over whether or not we get to leave on time…or at all. Verbally abusing this person isn’t going to get results, and it only reveals the person doing the yelling as a boor. I understand that these people were upset. I understand that it was late and everyone was probably tired and travel-weary and that many of the people in the crowd were likely just trying to get home and were likely in a state of panic wondering what they were going to do about jobs and commitments on Monday morning if they were still stuck in DC because they couldn’t get a flight. I understand that many of them may have been out a significant amount of money over the issue. I get all that. My point is that calling the desk agent a stupid asshole at the top of one’s voice isn’t going to change any of it, and it isn’t going to rack up any karma points for the boors, either. Poor, dear Boors; take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to figure out a work-around. Leave the beleaguered desk agent out of it – trust me; his day is much worse than yours is.

9. Oh, I almost forgot! I learned some secret Southern code while I was in Alabama! We were sitting around talking on Saturday, and Seester was telling us some stories about her grandma and about how unhappy the lady was when Seester brought home a Baptist whom she intended to wed. Seester’s family is Catholic, and grandma wasn’t all that happy about a Baptist in the family. She got over it, of course, but it was a little rocky for a while there. Anyway, when we were together on Sunday, Seester did a bit of an apology for telling not-so-nice stories about her grandma, then asked if I noticed that she punctuated her story with “bless her heart.” “Bless his/her heart,” Seester explained, is something that Southern people say when they’re trying to soften the blow of criticism. “He’s a smart man, bless his heart, but he’s useless with a hammer” would be an example of a good use of the phrase. I’m going to be totally on alert for that saying now. I might even use it myself.

10. I’ve been looking around my own home environment and thinking about how I would introduce my friends to New England. Bo made several comments over the course of the weekend that he almost never does the “tourist thing” in his hometown, and I think that’s likely true of all of us. Sure, I’ve been to a lot of places in Boston, but I think that’s mostly due to the fact that I grew up there and was taken on field trips every year to places like the USS Constitution and the Museum of Science (and, now that I have kids of my own, I chaperone them when THEY go on trips to these places). There are a few touristy things around my little coastal town that I’ve not experienced yet – I’ve not gone to see the Tall Ships when they’re in the harbor, I’ve not gone into the decommissioned submarine, I don’t go to the annual downtown festival, that sort of thing – and I’m looking around with new eyes as I imagine how I’d plan a visit by my friends to MY little corner of the country. Funny how a visit to someplace else makes one appreciate where one comes from.

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!