I Don't Eat Grits (Confessions of an Unsouthern Southerner)
There's a television station called "Turner South" that routinely features commercials featuring both celebrities and "regular folk" who talk about what "My South" means to them. When I watch these, I'm always like "Really"? The South is the place that I live, the place that I've lived my entire life, but I don't feel particulary "southern". If you asked me what it meant to be southern, I'd probably just stare at you like "What?". I have been called the most unsouthern person from the south by my southern friends in the know. So here are some ramblings on being southern (or unsouthern) as the case may be.
1) I don't eat grits. I can't stand them. This used to drive my daddy crazy...after all, what kind of self-respecting southerner doesn't eat grits. Um...I guess I'm not a self-respecting southerner? My fiance whose family is from New York (okay, he was like 7 or 8 when they moved here), loves the gritty things. I make them on occassion for him and grimace a bit when he eats them. I also use INSTANT grits, which I think consigns me to a special unsouthern status.
2) Accent. Here is a conversation that I've had more than once in my life:
"Where are you from?
"Here."
"No, I mean originally."
"I'm from here."
"Really, you don't sound like it."
Despite having lived in the south my whole life, it is apparently the last place that I sound like I would be from. Non-southerners are more likely to detect an accent, but they are wrong like 98% of the time about where I'm from. I've been told Texas more times than any other guess. ???? I can sound like I'm from the south...but it sounds like a really bad impression of a southern accent.
3) Sweet Tea. There is exactly ONE acceptable reason to not drink sweet tea. And that is if consumption of sugar will actually cause you bodily harm. Otherwise, refusal to drink sweet tea is apparently some sort of mental disease or defect.
4) Feeding people. I do think it is southern compulsion to feel the need to feed people and I have this in spades. If you are in my house for more than 60 seconds, I am going to try to feed you something and I am miffed if you don't accept. Don't even think about showing up a dinner time with some lame excuse like you just ate. I don't care. You will sit your butt down at the table and you will eat something. And you will be happy about it!
5) Southern hospitality. I don't consider feeding people as being hospitable...its more of a compulsion. Other than that, I'm really not all that hospitable. Granted, after years of having my brain dissolved by customer service, I am less unhospitable than I used to be, but I don't consider myself especially hospitable. I don't like people showing up unannounced and I have left more than one person standing on my front door knocking or ringing the doorbell. Why don't you be hospitable and frigging call me before you show up on my door. I remember working the front desk at a hotel years ago when two men from New York were checking in. When I asked how they were going to pay for their stay, they snapped off "Pay? Pay? Whatever happened to southern hospitality?" "I'm so sorry, but that died with the war." The Fed-Ex man, who was Hawaiin, nearly fell over laughing.
6) The Civil War. I have never referred to it as "The War of Northern Agression" and I'm not harboring any bad feelings about it. I don't own and never have owned a confedearate flag and don't believe that everyone who does still wants to bring back slavery.
7) Yankees. As my father said, Yankees come for a visit, damn Yankees come to stay. I live in a beautiful area that is being ruined by people who come from a visit and then decide to move here and build big houses on the ridgeline...thereby ruining the view that they say they love so much.
8) Misconceptions. I am annoyed by the misconceptions that people have about southerners and the south. We have a lot of clients who, when they visit for the first time, say it isn't what they expected. What surprised you more, the fact that we have indoor plumbing or that we wear shoes? That our roads are paved? That we have all our teeth or that we know how to speak proper English? (Yes, I use ya'll). I used the word "ain't" one time and someone I worked with actually walked out of their office to be sure that I was the one who said it because apparently my normal method of speaking isn't conducive to that word. They asked me if I was feeling okay.
9) Identity. I don't feel southern. I don't think of myself as a southerner. I can't really say what it means to be southern. I could never do a "My South" commercial.
10) And I still don't eat grits! Or collard greens...or turnip greens. I can't see how anyone does...the smell of them cooking is reason enough to not even think about even trying them.
But what do I know.....I'm an unsouthern southerner.
1) I don't eat grits. I can't stand them. This used to drive my daddy crazy...after all, what kind of self-respecting southerner doesn't eat grits. Um...I guess I'm not a self-respecting southerner? My fiance whose family is from New York (okay, he was like 7 or 8 when they moved here), loves the gritty things. I make them on occassion for him and grimace a bit when he eats them. I also use INSTANT grits, which I think consigns me to a special unsouthern status.
2) Accent. Here is a conversation that I've had more than once in my life:
"Where are you from?
"Here."
"No, I mean originally."
"I'm from here."
"Really, you don't sound like it."
Despite having lived in the south my whole life, it is apparently the last place that I sound like I would be from. Non-southerners are more likely to detect an accent, but they are wrong like 98% of the time about where I'm from. I've been told Texas more times than any other guess. ???? I can sound like I'm from the south...but it sounds like a really bad impression of a southern accent.
3) Sweet Tea. There is exactly ONE acceptable reason to not drink sweet tea. And that is if consumption of sugar will actually cause you bodily harm. Otherwise, refusal to drink sweet tea is apparently some sort of mental disease or defect.
4) Feeding people. I do think it is southern compulsion to feel the need to feed people and I have this in spades. If you are in my house for more than 60 seconds, I am going to try to feed you something and I am miffed if you don't accept. Don't even think about showing up a dinner time with some lame excuse like you just ate. I don't care. You will sit your butt down at the table and you will eat something. And you will be happy about it!
5) Southern hospitality. I don't consider feeding people as being hospitable...its more of a compulsion. Other than that, I'm really not all that hospitable. Granted, after years of having my brain dissolved by customer service, I am less unhospitable than I used to be, but I don't consider myself especially hospitable. I don't like people showing up unannounced and I have left more than one person standing on my front door knocking or ringing the doorbell. Why don't you be hospitable and frigging call me before you show up on my door. I remember working the front desk at a hotel years ago when two men from New York were checking in. When I asked how they were going to pay for their stay, they snapped off "Pay? Pay? Whatever happened to southern hospitality?" "I'm so sorry, but that died with the war." The Fed-Ex man, who was Hawaiin, nearly fell over laughing.
6) The Civil War. I have never referred to it as "The War of Northern Agression" and I'm not harboring any bad feelings about it. I don't own and never have owned a confedearate flag and don't believe that everyone who does still wants to bring back slavery.
7) Yankees. As my father said, Yankees come for a visit, damn Yankees come to stay. I live in a beautiful area that is being ruined by people who come from a visit and then decide to move here and build big houses on the ridgeline...thereby ruining the view that they say they love so much.
8) Misconceptions. I am annoyed by the misconceptions that people have about southerners and the south. We have a lot of clients who, when they visit for the first time, say it isn't what they expected. What surprised you more, the fact that we have indoor plumbing or that we wear shoes? That our roads are paved? That we have all our teeth or that we know how to speak proper English? (Yes, I use ya'll). I used the word "ain't" one time and someone I worked with actually walked out of their office to be sure that I was the one who said it because apparently my normal method of speaking isn't conducive to that word. They asked me if I was feeling okay.
9) Identity. I don't feel southern. I don't think of myself as a southerner. I can't really say what it means to be southern. I could never do a "My South" commercial.
10) And I still don't eat grits! Or collard greens...or turnip greens. I can't see how anyone does...the smell of them cooking is reason enough to not even think about even trying them.
But what do I know.....I'm an unsouthern southerner.
posted by Hope at 10:25 AM
7 Comments:
Hi Hope
I'm Dagoth and I'm from Pennsylvania.
LOL! Would you like some grits?
LOL! I can identify with you in many ways. But I do eat grits. But after I mix in all the sugar they are more like cream of wheat.
I thought grit is a small, loose particles of stones :-)
I love this list! I just attending this conference on intercultural understanding and global perspective with people from different parts of the world. Our speaker is an American woman from Arizona and an Irish man living in Bavaria! Anyway, we were there debunking stereotypes and myths about our cultural identity. Your list would have fit in!
Remember to add that damn yankees move down here... half backs are the ones that moved to Florida, and decided it was too hot, then moved half way back to North Carolina.
I wish they would stop allowing building on our mountains. That is the view I have loved my whole life and now I get to see someones enormous gaudy house up there. But we will get to laugh when it eventually slides off in a good rain storm!!
Grits, this southerner loves 'em!
I have never discovered exactly what grits are. In fact, my only association with grits came through the old movie My Cousin Vinnie. aan you improve my knowledge, please?
As for fitting in, I nevr have. I look like I do. I sound like I do. But I never feel like I do, and others will sometimes accentuate that feeling. So I carry on my way, as I am generally happy with my ways, and dman the rest of them. Stereotypes are meant to be blown up.
Blackcrag: Grits are essentially ground, dried corn kernals that you then boil. Sounds yummy, eh? It is up to us to challenge the stereotypes.
Post a Comment
<< Home