BFL-East
Last weekend, Mrs. X, Baby X and I travelled north into the South, and had the pleasure of meeting the Bear Flag League’s easternmost member, Jon Henke of QandO, along with his lovely wife and their photogenic son. Very nice people - be sure to look them up if you’re ever in the greater Richmond area. Unless, of course, you’re a serial killer / cyberstalker / axe murderer / etc., as most people who use the Internet are. In that case, please leave them alone; look up this guy instead.
Come to think of it, almost everyone we met on that trip was very, very nice. In Richmond, we jaywalked in a really bad way, but the lady who would have run us over under California rules smiled and waved at us, instead. Our tour guide insisted we had no accents, even though we obviously do, and insisted on paying for everything (which reminds me, I owe Jon and the family dinner too if I’m ever out that way again). The sales staff at Cold Stone Creamery apologized for the rude behavior of sales staff at another Cold Stone back in California. Even the stewardesses flight attendants were nice, for cryin’ out loud. What’s up with that? Is there something about the South that makes everyone unusually nice, or are the rest of us living in asshole-land?
January 31st, 2006 at 12:32 am
It’s ironic.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:00 am
“Is there something about the South that makes everyone unusually nice”
—Last week we were recruiting. Once you’re on staff, we get to drop the charade. Those are the Chamber of Commerce rules.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:36 am
Yes, most of us are armed. I kid. Actually, it’s a Southern thing to take great pains not to be rude. That way, when someone actually decides to be rude, the recipient of that rudeness knows that. Hence, the dreaded bless his heart.
January 31st, 2006 at 9:22 am
They do tend to be more Republican…Cause effect…hard to know, but given the…uh…enjoyment of sitting on poorly maintained roads because transportation money has to be diverted to pet projects, uh well…Never mind.
January 31st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
“Bless his heart” is dreaded? *puzzled look*
January 31st, 2006 at 1:27 pm
“Bless his heart” is the way a southern lady says “What an idiot” without being rude.
Example:
“Billy Joe went and wrecked his pickup the other night ’cause he was drivin after a bit too much moonshine, Bless his Heart”.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:18 am
It isn’t that the rest of the country is nice, it’s that the greater Southern California area is full of assholes, particularly in the service industry, whose film school careers have been snuffed out by “bad luck” or “capitalism” (depending on how wanna-be big star vs. edgy indy person they are).
Seattle has the music failures, DC the political ones, NY the general ones.
Once you get away from places people affirmatively move to hoping to make it big on near impossible dreams, you tend to get normal (i.e. nice) people.
February 7th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I second Uncle’s assessment. (Not the armed part, the other part.) It’s not so much that Southerners are nicer, they simply try to appear nicer. The upside is that everyone seems nice. The downside is, you’re never quite sure where you stand.
While Northerners (or, at least, upper Midwesterners) like me are often too quick to call an asshole an asshole, at least you know where you stand with me. In the South, not so much. Someone can be sweet as pie to you while hating your guts and saying all kinds of horrible things about you when you’re not around. In fact, I’ve found that the nicer someone in the South is to me, the more I should keep an eye on them. :)