I am a girl born in “The South”. I speak with an accent, thanks to 4 years of college with my best friend, Amy Jo (yes, that’s her real name). Growing up I heard, “Where are you from? You talk fuuunny?” My response, “I talk like the rest of my family, YOU talk funny.” I did develop a twang, but even now, it’s not as bad as some of my friends. I don’t know that I would call myself a true “Southern Girl”, as there are many qualities of such that I don’t possess.
First of all, and the main reason for revocation of my Southern Girl membership, I do NOT like grits. I not only don’t like them; I HATE them. I would have to be starving for days to even consider eating them, and even then I’d probably wait another day or two. I was the sort of child (and the same sort of adult) who I would NOT eat something I didn’t like. If I don’t like it, that’s all there is to it. I have gone hungry and thirsty more than once because something I didn’t care for was served at a meal.
The second reason and one the largest number of people find most abhorrent and unacceptable: I don’t drink sweet tea or as it is also known, sugar tea. I never have drank and never will. It tastes like drinking syrup. I prefer mine strong, unsweetened, lots of ice and NO lemon, thankyouverymuch.
Now, most people are aware that girls in The South grow up on football. I was raised by a group of women from Indiana, so I was raised up on basketball. I hate football, and all things football-related, except tail-gaiting; that is ONE southern trait I DO possess, the love of a good party! I don’t care who wins, loses, who is ranked,etc. I live in a VERY college football oriented town, so it is everywhere! I do like home game days because the stores are little more empty, and I can find a good parking spot.
I can’t fry chicken or make white gravy.
I do have some Southern Girl traits, but I think not enough to make me full-fledged, which I could never be anyway, because my generation of the family is the first born in The South, so I wouldn’t qualify regardless. I can plant a seed in a man’s mind, and he’ll think he came up with it on his own. I know how to bait a hook, skin a catfish; I’ve sat in a deer stand, bored to tears mind you. I’ve checked trot lines. I’ve caught lightning bugs. I know a little bit about a car, and I can recognize a nice outboard motor. I love the lowcountry of South Carolina and would claim it over any other place on the planet as home. I’m not blond haired or blue eyed. I never went to my own débutante ball, but I did accompany a young man to his dilettante ball. I know how to take the sting out of a fire ant bite or a bee sting.
I’m not a full-fledged Hoosier, and I can’t count my relatives back to The Original 13 Colonies. I’m just like the majority of the country, a mutt created from an immigrant Irish grandfather and a grandmother with English bloodlines, my mother was created from them and I was created from her and a Cherokee father. I think I’m doing okay without my pedigree.
Incoherent Ramblings 