Regional Differences

                America used to be pretty neatly divided into sections, kind of like in The Hunger Games and almost as violent.  The North meant something.  The West meant something else.  The South really meant something.  These geographic differences and all that accompanies them still exist.  They don’t mean what they once did, but they’re still around.  There are still arguments about states’ rights today.  They don’t have any unspoken connotations about slavery, but the basis of the argument is still around.  Look at how different parts of the country have dealt with Obamacare. 

                One of the big remaining differences is honorifics.   

                OK, this is personal.  My father was from “The North” and my mother, “The South.”  I’ve lived in both regions and always felt a slight tug toward both of them.  When I lived up North, my mother was still Southern, and so, like all Southern mothers, she taught her sons to call all women, “ma’am,” and all men, “sir.”  She was my mother, and she told me to do that.  So, I did that.  I had a female third-grade teacher in Delaware.  I called her “ma’am.”  She thought that I was being a smart-ass.  She just ASSUMED that I was being a nine-year-old little punk and was sassing her.  She threatened to suspend me from school.  Excessive politeness is the scourge of my generation, like meth or internet plagiarism for the current generation.  Seriously, this woman couldn’t fathom that I, at age nine, was just doing what my mother told me to do.  In the great American teacher tradition, she called an Emergency Parent-Teacher Conference.  Damn that child and his politeness!  Of course, my mother came in and explained the situation to the bewildered teacher, and I didn’t get in trouble.  The memory stuck with me.  The lesson here is clear: Don’t Trust Third-Grade Teachers.  They’re all evil. 

                Another lingering difference is the hazy etiquette surrounding self-reliance and gender roles. 

                I’ve got another example from when I was little.  I think I was ten, maybe eleven at the time.  We were in a New York airport, La Guardia I think.  It was busy.  People were rushing to get to their gates.  This was before the TSA decided to inspect all of our socks, so the lines weren’t as weird or as long.  I remember that my parents and my brother had just passed through a large glass door.  I was last in line.  So, I held the door for the lady behind me lugging her suitcase through the terminal.  I held the door for her.  That’s all I did.  Instead of smiling at the ten-year-old, saying “Thank You,” or giving me candy, she yelled at me.  For real.  This busy New York businesswoman type just went off on me in some bizarre-feminist rant, accusing me of demeaning her by thinking that she was incapable of opening the door for herself.  That, in and of itself, would be weird enough…but I was ten!  I was a freaking child holding the door for a busy woman.  Did she really think that I was trying to make any kind of gender equality statement at ten?  What kind of ten-year-olds was this woman used to dealing with?  And who yells at a child stranger in an airport?  Even pre-9/11, a scene like that should’ve alerted security or any passing psychiatrists that something was wrong.   That kind of thing wouldn’t have happened at a Southern airport. 

                I’m not claiming that the South is superior, but I do resent the national thought that we’re inherently inferior.  The South is still the butt of a lot of national jokes, some with good reason, and some just the products of lingering history. 

                We still think of The West as more lawless…and some of that is still true.  We still think of The North as more industrious…and some of that is still true.  We still think of The South as more rural…and yeah, some of that is still true, too.  But, it’s not nearly as true as people think.  I went to a black/white interracial wedding in Georgia in 2004, and it was no big deal.  It was just as boring as every other wedding.  I felt just as sorry for the groom as I do at every other wedding.  I fantasized about just as many bridesmaids as at every other wedding.  Even four years before President Obama was first elected, that was not a big deal…and it was in The South. 

                There are still regional differences.  I don’t think that I have a grand point to make with this blog entry.  Honestly, I think I just wanted to get some revenge on that angry bitch in La Guardia.  Take that, woman whose name and face I don’t remember.