Pitfalls of Southern Living that Northerners Don’t Understand

I was raised in the North and, for many years, I believed that everyone in the US was roughly the same.  Sure some people had accents and did things a little differently, but, at our core, we were all alike.  Oh, how wrong I was!

Today, after living in the South for a few years, people don’t believe the things I’ve seen and heard when I tell them about Southern living.  So, for all of us Northerns who jumped down a few states, here are some issues that our friends back home just don’t understand:

• Drivers are psychopathic sociopaths.  You could be passing a massive wreck that clearly features serious injuries or fatalities, and the people behind you still want to do 20 over the speed limit.  From what I’ve seen, cops in the South rarely pull people over for speeding or other minor traffic violations, so people drive like assholes.  Accidents are frequent, and usually the result of a speeder, or someone trying to whip around someone else who was going too slow.  Driving in the South is like constantly playing a game of chicken, and I’ve even had a police officer honk and flip me off because I slowed down too much (by his standards) to take a right turn.  And left turns into on coming traffic?  Just prepare to die now.  Southerners will have a two foot gap in between cars going 60 miles per hour, and they will get annoyed that they are waiting too long and take that left turn – missing a deadly wreck by the mere grace of the other driver’s brakes.  The really cute part is that, while the road is an “all about ME” experience, once you inevitably get to Walmart in the sea of drivers (who are angry at you for not going 75 in a 35), you look around and see that all of the road ragers are 600 pounds and move slower than a turtle on foot.  Really, you honked at me for five minutes because I wouldn’t stop my car on the train tracks during a red light – WHILE A TRAIN IS COMING – because you can’t stand that extra wait time to get to Wally World?  Pathetic…
• It doesn’t even take an inch of snow or ice to bring a major city to it’s knees.  Seriously, I was used to driving to college in blizzards, going ridiculous slow behind the plow so that I didn’t die.  That wasn’t a catastrophic event, that was any given day in February!  But, in the South, people see snow and they panic – then their common sense turns to mush.  You know why all those cars got stuck in Atlanta and kids were spending the night at schools, completely stranded?  Because SLOW DOWN only applied to hills.  I watched in shock as people tried to do 75 miles per hour on fresh snow, and if they didn’t end up sliding off the road, they would eventually come to an incline and try to do 0.5 miles per hour up it.  I guess the logic was:  “oh, watch out, it’s a hill!” but, in reality, all they did was get themselves stuck from a lack of momentum.  Combine that with a general lack or plow and salt trucks in the South and – TAAADAAA – an entire region is crippled and people are abandoning their cars on major highways.  It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if the same thing didn’t happen every few years…

  Here is the road in front of my house during the snow that shut the South down (ALL of those cars are parked and have given up driving in these “impossible” conditions):
  
  Please, tell me that I’m not the only one who can still see the pavement under this minor powdering of snow!

• Rain.  Seriously, the freaking rain is so intense that you think it may bring your house down.  It’s crazy, because, many, many, many times the rain hits hard and out of nowhere.  Also, forget about keeping anything outside, because it will be ruined in days via rust or mold (if it doesn’t blow away completely).  Don’t bother signing your kids up for outdoor sports either, because they’ll only get to play about 50% of their games due to the weather.  And the farther South you are, the worse the rain gets.  Whoever decided to build Disney World in the lightning capital of the world, well, I just don’t think they were thinking things through.  Plus, the rain is salty, oh so salty, so any knicks you got while shaving are sure to sting for days to come.
• People really don’t care about their work.  I see it all the time and everywhere I go, and it’s definitely an epidemic; workers have the attitude of “I get paid whether I do a good job or not,” so they actively decide to be terrible at their jobs.  I don’t just mean that the kids working at McDonald’s are horrendous, because most teenagers are terrible at life skills, but, in the South, adults who have been manufacturing, crafting, creating, or laboring for decades go at each job like quality is a myth.  Don’t believe me?  Come to the South and hire a lawn service, or pay a PROFESSIONALLY listed person to hang wallpaper for you.  It’s a crappy, sloppy job that falls apart in minutes (weeks if you’re lucky).  Even the locals know, if you want something done well, call up someone who moved here from the North, because they take their jobs seriously, and they do their work the right way.
• If you don’t have a deck and a pool, you have no social life.  No one will come to your gatherings if you don’t have these two vidal social spots.  If someone really wants to show off, they’ll have one of those fancy double-deck and/or a deck around their in-ground pool.

• Religion isn’t a part of your life in the South, it’s the only thing that matters.  Perhaps the worst part about being a non-Christian family in the South is that church isn’t optional, as it is the non-stop topic of conversation.  Even the teachers and activity volunteers carry on as if there is no possible way that anyone around them might be something other than a Christian.  For the most part, I don’t take offense, and I overlook it when the teachers are blatantly telling the kids to pray in class.  But when the school is calling, texting, emailing, and sending notes home about the mandatory Praise and Worship Service Club meetings, it starts to push your buttons (and, yes, this is a public school!).  Then, if your kids don’t attend the club meetings, they are immediately singled out and questioned relentlessly.

  Oh, the joys of being forced out of the religious closet in the South!  I won’t even bother to outline how negatively it impacts each day of your life.  From experience, though, people in the South are more tolerant of LGBT couples than they are of non-believers.

• “Jesus Did It” is a viable answer for everything, even math problems.  On the few occasions that I’ve been involved in the classroom at my kids’ school, I am amazed how often Jesus comes up.  It’s actually aggravated me to the point where I try very hard NOT to get involved in the classroom any more.  I’ve witnessed more than a handful of teachers allow “Jesus did it” to be a valid, accepted answer to a number of questions, including, and I kid you not, “what’s six divided by three?”  Kids, you are all welcome to have your personal beliefs, but an educational standard needs to be set somewhere.
• BUGS!  I knew the South was well populated in the insect department, but I had no earthly idea of how bad it was.  We came to the South from the Southwest, where it’s so hot that you pretty much on deal with roaches.  Now, roaches are terribly disgusting, don’t get me wrong, and they make my skin crawl, but the bugs I’ve seen here in the Southern Rain Forest are the things of pure nightmares!  I’m pretty sure the arachnid that created Spider-Man has a nest in my trees, and I’ve seen spiders so big that they were transporting pine cones!  Not to mention the centipedes, kudzu bugs, bees, wasps, hornets, “chiggers,” carpenter ants, fire ants, termites, and the list never ends!  Every few weeks there is a new creature invading your house and running rampant.  Worst of all, most insects seem immune to pest control poisons, so there is no keeping them out!

  Think I’m making it up?  Meet my buddy the Banana Orb Spider (at least, we think that’s what these guys are).  He and his kinfolk set up shop in most of the trees and bushes around my house, and this is actually the smallest one I’ve ever seen.

  
  Some of his buddies are the size of softballs, but, they move pretty fast and scary like, so this was the only one I was willing to get close enough to for a photograph.

• Single parents be damned!  I don’t know how I would manage if I didn’t have a husband, in all honesty.  Not only are most jobs in the South tertiary (fast food, retails, and all other service industry), but if you have a personal life at all, you better be prepared to lose your job.  I gave up job hunting after about 2,000 applications over six months.  The few times I was offered a job, it was part-time, minimum wage OR commission based, and they wanted me there exclusively on evenings and weekends.  This is with multiple college degrees, mind you – I’ve been to grad school!

  So, how in the hell am I supposed to work that kind of schedule when I have children and no family nearby to pick up the slack for me?  The pay rate wasn’t even enough to cover what I’d spend on childcare, let alone compensate me enough to make my student loan payments on top of that.  To add a cherry on the sundae, the schools here have a week long break every freaking month they’re in session!  It’s now the middle of October, so we have a week of Fall Break right now.  Why?  Oh, because the kids irritate the teachers, so they need some time away.  Meanwhile, a household with working parents is supposed to do what with their crappy rate of pay exactly?  Fork over $200 per child per week for a special daycare or camp, request unpaid vacation time from work, or simply lose your job?  It is absolutely ludicrous!

• Food has no hint of being nutritious.  Hey, junk food is everywhere, and I’m well aware of that.  However, everyone uses butter and deep fryers around here like they own stock in Consolidated Lard (I made a Rugrats reference, yay!).  Terms like oven-baked and grilled are often met with a pound of butter – you know, for flavor – and all the unhealthy fixins that will send you to an early, diabetic grave.  So go on, get your deep fried pickles and grits, the lap band industry has to get new clients from somewhere!
• Discrimination is alive and well – and, not what you may think.  Having grown up in the North, I can’t say that racism doesn’t exist, but it’s definitely a different animal up there.  Sure, you don’t have to look for long in the Northern states to find people who separate themselves by class, color, religion, or other things, but, for the most part, it’s an optional segregation due to personal preference.  Plus, even if you aren’t best buddies, you’ll still have friends that are different from you, because, for the most part, Northerners are kind of yuppies who believe in equality and treating people the way you’d like to be treated.  We actually think it’s a good thing to learn about other cultures and expand our horizons, and a lot of Northerns will speak up if they see someone being put in an actual situation of racism or discrimination.

  But, in the South, if you aren’t like us then you’re against us.  There is such an atmosphere of intolerance that it’s astounding.  Kids in pre-school are already predisposed not to communicate with kids who are outside or their race and/or religion.  Nowhere else in the nation have I ever heard a 2nd grader tell a kid that they can’t speak to each other, because they don’t want their brother to think they’re “trying to be white” by talking to a white kid.   In fact, causing harm to or bullying a white kid gets your “street cred.”  There seems to be a very set standard of what black and white are supposed to be and mean, and it’s a shame that so many Southerners pinhole themselves like that for no good reason.

  Plus, everywhere we go, everything we do, this issue of race comes up, and, all too often, it comes across like a ploy for someone to get their way.  If the customer service department at Kmart won’t refund you money when trying to return used underwear, that’s not racism!  Yet that’s what the returning customer starts screaming to make a scene until they get their money back.  If a waitress charged you for two drinks instead of one, that wasn’t an attack on you for being a minority, it was a mistake – they happen.  If you work at a cash register and keep giving people change for a $50 when they hand you a $10, you weren’t fired for being “black,” you were fired for being incompetent.  Even though most of it seems like a buzz word to get attention, race is the engine that moves the South along, and just being “whitey” makes you a target for ridicule and harassment.  Even while shopping in the Dollar General a woman started screaming over the phone, “and you wonder why we want to kill all you white people!”  Am I the only one that thinks this is not acceptable or normal behavior?  Nope, sorry, we never owned slaves, we don’t have good jobs, and we aren’t connected to the government – there’s no possible way that my family’s existence keeps your life down in any form!  Put the card back in the deck, quit calling me a white devil or “the man,” and move on.

• Being a feminist means you’re a “troublemaker.”  Do you remember watching those old black and white shows on Nick at Night?  You know, the ones where the wife was this pretty, little thing that stayed at home and worshiped her husband?  That’s still Southern mentality, and an independent woman is often treated like a dangerous woman.  And the expectations men have of their wives have made my jaw drop.  I’ve met men who will not go to work or leave the house at all unless their wife puts on their socks and ties their shoes for them!  And this was on more than one occasion!  That isn’t every man in the South, of course, but women here seem to be consistently treated like property and personal servants to their husbands.  The level of controlling behavior towards women in the South is an epidemic, plain and simple.
• The women can be everything that Family Guy warned us about.  I have long since gotten irritated with Family Guy for their repeated suggestion that all women just hate one another and go at each other like rabid dogs.  Yet, here I stand, having met just that kind of behavior every single time I try to volunteer or make a new friend.  If you are under a woman in charge, you often get a lot of abuse.  They call you names, they start making demands on you in very rude ways, and you’re just sitting there like, “hey, I’m a volunteer and I just got here!  Plus, I didn’t even volunteer for THIS project!”  Yet, if my husband would come and fill in for me one night, or a man is volunteering and doing a very bad job that needs correction or direction, those same women won’t say a word to the males.  I suppose, logically, if women are treated like slaves at home they will turn around and do the same thing to the people “under” them outside of the house, but I still don’t think that makes it alright.

  Similarly, if you get put in charge of something, you are constantly challenged and met with adversity at every turn.  I tried to lead a Girl Scout troop after being volun-told to do so, and the mothers, none of whom wanted to help or volunteer themselves, made my life an endless drama pit to where I was spending 60 hours a week dealing with needless mama-drama and having these women snapping their fingers and telling me what to do.  I was forced to volunteer in Cub Scouts and immediately the top ranking female in the pack treated me like her servant.  And, my stance is, if I’m not paid to be there, then I’m certainly not volunteering to be treated like shit.  Since moving to the South, I have met two women that haven’t attempted to rip my throat out at first glance.  It wears you out quickly, especially if you aren’t raised to be treated like an inferior creature, and I have stepped down from volunteering in many different activities just because the abuse I received from Southern women was not worth the hassle of helping with a Fall Festival or PTA meeting.

So, all Northerners living in the Southern states, I now make it your mission to warn others about moving!  They may not believe you, they may mock you and laugh at you for drinking the local Kool-Aid, but, all the same, we have a chance to save some people from severe culture shock!  Because, short of old people who miss the “good old days” of the 50s, I can’t imagine anyone with a Northern mindset getting along at all in the South.