A common theme you may see running through this blog are the ways that I (and Brien) have discovered that South Florida is anything but the South. From the accents to the incredible number of Yankee and/or Red Sox car flags to the fact that we have to keep a short list of restaurants that serve sweet tea, one quickly realizes that the greater Fort Lauderdale area is not a member of the greater southeastern culture.
I have decided that "The South" for most people down here is the place they fly over to get to and from Florida to their homes/families up in the northeast, a place they have heard of, maybe even tried to imagine based on lyrical descriptions they hear from the country radio stations, but have never really ventured into.
A recent post by gillikin reminded me of a brief conversation I had recently with a parent of one of my baseball kids, which illustrates the above observation:
The mom: Thanks for coming to the tournament this weekend, Coach. The boys love having you.
Me: Sure thing, Mrs. X, I wouldn't have missed. The boys played well.
The Mom (noticing my Georgia license plate): Oh, are you from Walker, Georgia? (she said it in an excited, nostalgic kind of way, as if that was where she had grown up)
Me: Sort of, I went to school in north Georgia and lived there for a few years after college. Are you from there?
(I expected her to tell me that she had gone to high school in Rossville or Dalton or some coincidental connection like that. I was excited, my mind already imagining the southern hospitality that might result from this meeting - the family would have me over for grits sometime, and we sit together and work on our southern drawls and talk about college football and state's rights, etc.)
The Mom: No, I stayed in Alabama once.
Me: Oh.
At that moment I think I realized how many internationals must feel around us stupid Americans. They visit our church or social group, and we try to be relevant and establish commonality and act as if we understand the Ukrainian because we visited Moscow, or north German life because we flew through Frankfurt. Please.
So much for the grits.
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2 comments:
i think one of the signs that our world is not as it should be is that not everyone is able to live in the south. another of those effects is florida. period. stay strong sleuth.
I concur. Both with you, Jason, and Gilli. I can see you miss the south very much. Soooo, that means you need to come visit! ;) That would be grand wouldn't it? We miss you Jas. From one southerner to another. Ya'll come back now ya hear!
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