The Tales from the Trip

I visited My Girl in North Carolina over Labor Day Weekend. The South is weird. Well it is for a Northerner like me.

Want an example? We went to a chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. My Girl ordered her usual Diet Coke. I ordered a tea. Now in most chinese restaurants, ordering tea will bring you a pot containing hot green tea. Usually there are handle-less tea cups involved as well. Not in North Carolina. I came back to our table with my first plate and there was a tall glass of sweet tea (pronounced sweettay). That was fine because I like sweet tea too, but it wasn't what I was expecting.

Similarly lots of people had accents and that seemed to make my mind jump to conclusions faster.

(1) Attractive women get even hotter. Southern women just sound sexy. Men might gain a certain air too, but I'm straight so if they get sexier I'm not the right person to notice. If My Girl picks up an accent down there I won't complain.

(2) Unattractive people metamorphose into total rednecks. They could be fat or skinny. Maybe they just need to put on a shirt. Others are like My Girl's neighbor who is Boomhauer-ly unintelligible. I find myself repeating Jeff Foxworthy routines to myself. They could be the nicest people ever and it doesn't matter.

(3) Slightly provocative people instantly become skanks. Remember Britney Spears when her first album came out. Normal girls in the south are like that; cute and (if you were in the proper age group) pretty sexy. On the other hand a southern woman dressing a little slutty is like Britney now; total whore-slut.

(4) People with multiple layered accents are just perplexing sometimes. The waitress at the aforementioned buffet had a Chinese accent and a North Carolinian accent. I can't write something down to illustrate the weirdness of this without getting into stereotypes that offend even me. I've actually experienced this before closer to home though. Most of the Indian professors at my alma mater had layered British and Indian accents. Its still weird when a chinese woman with the full asian accent says "you all" though.

Anyway the last bit of weirdness is the cuisine shift. There the usual franchises, but on top of this there are Sonic (yum!), Checkers, and Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits. Oh and Hardees. Yummy thickburgers. Even yummier thickburger commercials with that girl on the mechanical bull. Yowsa! Anyway mechanical bull girl sidetracked my brain. Suffice it to say that the general level of cuisine became about twice as fattening. I gained a lot of respect for My Girl because she actually lost weight in this environment.

P.S. Yes I realize that North Carolina isn't really the South because the state still has "north" in the name. ;)