I’ve always said that you can say the meanest, most hateful things in the world… but you if you start off with “Bless his/her heart” it lessens the sting.

As a Yankee who grew up just a few miles from you, I’ve had to adjust to the cultural differences, too. And it’s the little things that impact the quality of life down here. People are generally more pleasant to complete strangers, especially in public. The first time my parents came to visit me in Alabama, they got a little freaked out by all the times they were called “ma’am” and “sir.” And Jay always reminds me not to say “What?” or “Huh?” to his grandmother. If I need her to repeat herself, the proper question is to simply say, “Ma’am?”

I’m glad you enjoyed your visit… Next time we’ll have to budget time for you to come to Birmingham. Woo hoo!

1. When I’m traveling outside the South, I blend with the best of them on interpersonal behavior—quickening my pace, shortening or eliminating my eye contact, etc.—on most things. But I can’t drop “ma’am” and “sir” to save my life. I don’t even try anymore.

2. I get the same feeling you do on the “familiar/funky” when I’m in the Northeast, but in reverse, obviously. Everything feels too close together.

3. I’ll probably come off like a bad Southerner on this: I like Southern accents, but I don’t think anything goes. If your accent (of any kind) is a regular hindrance to you being understood properly, then I think you ought to work on it. There’s regional pride, and then there’s babbling incoherently.

4. I hope you didn’t suffer thirsty with that sweet tea, Chili. She’d have been happy to top you off with unsweetened. Truth be told, most folks who gush about sweet tea like it sweeter than I do, as well. I got sweet on Saturday because, well, sheesh, it was Main Street Cafe.

5. I picked the color in my study, which is a bit lighter blue than the photo you reference, but Lea is almost completely responsible for the decor. Good thing, too: there would be steel, black leather, and glass most everywhere if it were all up to me.

6. We’ll have to geocache next time. We never had the sustained weather for it this time.

7. Agree wholeheartedly on bawling out front-line service staff. When I was much younger and much more hotheaded, I made a kid at the K mart photo counter cry. I can still feel just as bad as I want to about that whenever I remember it. But no more. Not in years. Not ever again, I hope. These days, it’s a smile, it’s a normal tone of voice, and prefacing with something like “I know you’re frustrated too” goes a hell of a long way. (And though it’s not a primary motivation for me in doing so: if you’re nice to them and they’re in a position to favor some over others, guess which pile you’ll end up in?)

8. Gerry, aren’t you in Florida? And the peninsula, no less? That’s not the South. Panama City or Pensacola, we’d talk.

9. Liv, I hear a “thank God for Mississippi” once in a while, generally when Alabama has ranked poorly on some measure of goodness. But I carry no interstate snobbery. I’m protective of the South in general.

10. Madge, welcome!