This marvelous little soufflé was sent to me by my friend Elaine. Elaine has always been a veritable fountain of the odd and obscure. Whatever she sends, however, is always gold-stamp guaranteed to produce a smile. As I live in a confederate state, she thought I might find it amusing. I did. So will you.
Someone once noted that a Southerner can get away with the most awful kind of insult just as long as it’s prefaced with the words, “Bless her heart” or “Bless his heart,” as in, “Bless his heart, if they put his brain on the head of a pin, it’d roll around like a BB on a six-lane highway.”
I was thinking about this the other day when a friend was telling about her new transplanted northern friend who was upset because her toddler is just beginning to talk and he has a southern accent. My friend, who is very kind and, bless her heart, cannot do a thing about those thighs of hers, was justifiably miffed about this. After all, this woman had CHOSEN to move to the South a couple of years ago. Can you believe it?” said her friend, “A child of mine is going to be “taaaallllkkin liiiike thiiiissss.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Some of my dearest friends are from the North, bless their hearts. I welcome their perspective, their friendships, and their recipes for authentic Northern Italian food. I’ve even gotten past their endless complaints that you can’t find good bread down here. And the heathens, bless their hearts, don’t like cornbread!
We’ve already lost too much. I was raised to say “swayya,” not swear, but you hardly ever hear anyone say that anymore, I swayya you don’t. And I’ve caught myself thinking twice before saying something is “right much,” “right close,” or “right good” because non-natives think this is right funny indeed.
I have a friend from Bawston, bless her heart, who thinks it’s hilarious when I say I’ve got to “carry” my daughter to the doctor or “cut off” the light. She also gets a giggle every time I am “fixin'” to do something. And, bless their hearts, they don’t even know where “over yonder” is, or what “I reckon” means!
My personal favorite was my aunt, saying, “Bless her heart, she can’t help being ugly, but she could’ve stayed home.”
Southern girls know bad manners when they see them:
- Drinking straight out of a can.
- Not sending thank you notes.
- Velvet after February.
- White shoes before Memorial Day or after Labor Day
Southern girls always say:
- “Yes, ma’am.”
- “Yes, sir.”
Southern girls have a distinct way with fond expressions:
- “Y’all come back now, ya heaah.”
- “Well, bless your heart.”
- “Drop by when you can.”
- “How’s your mama?”
- “Love your hair.”
Southern girls know their three R’s:
- Rich
- Richer
- Richest
Southern girls know everybody’s first name:
- Honey
- Darlin’
- Shugah
Southern girls know the movies that speak to their hearts:
- “Gone With the Wind”
- “Fried Green Tomatoes”
- “Driving Miss Daisy”
- “Steel Magnolias”
Southern girls know their cities dripping with Southern charm:
- Hotlanta or Adlanna (Atlanta as outsiders say)
- Richmon
- Challston
- S’vannah
- Birminham
- Nawlins’
- Oh! and that city in Alabama ? It’s pronounced MUNTGUMRY!
Southern girls know the three deadly sins:
- Bad hair
- Bad manners
- Bad blind dates
G. R. I. T. S. = Girls Raised in The South!
Now you run along, Shugah, and send this to someone else Raised In The South, i. e., Southern Belles, or ANY females aspiring to be GRITS. Even the northern ones, “Bless Their Hearts”.
That reminds me. I have a rubber stamp that says “Just because your children were born in the South, that does not make them Southerners. After all, if a cat had kittens in the oven, that wouldn’t make them biscuits.”
Save the earth. It’s the only planet with chocolate.
Hilarious, TFLS! Thanks for sharing, it gave me a few chuckles. We were having a discussion just the other day about “bless her heart” and “no offense”. It gives priceless cover for words gone bad š
My ex’s wife is red-neck southern and is one of my dearest friends. Some of her expressions always tickle me and I never get tired of hearing her talk.
“Bless your heart” is definitely a big one. Doll Baby is another, but what I like the most are the family names- Her dad is Lester Buster, a cousin is Sissy Bug.. well you get the picture. I often wonder why Northerners don’t have such fun names.
And there is also the issue of double names. You simple MUST have a middle name, which is important. When you are little, being addressed by your middle name means
“Listen up, child, something important is being said” as in:
“Kidspeak Celia Bowen! You are NOT going out of the house looking like that!”
-or-
“Kidspeak Celia Bowen, if you are still a Republican, I don’t even want to talk to you.” (This was my junior high locker mate talking, having not seen me since we were 12.
Or worse, using one’s Full Legal Name. When my better half uses our son’s FLN, she commands his instant and undivided attention.
“Jamie Owen Rogers! Come here this instant!” can produce his instantaneous teleportation from parts unknown.
oh good heavens, I have done that many times with my children!!! :o)
I would use only the first two first and middle for the most part, unless it was reallllllly urgent…and yes they came out of the woodwork for that one!!!!! (or try to hide in the woodwork, depending on the crime):o)
My father would call me by my first and middle name when he was trying to get me out of bed of the morning. Just made me sick as hell…no fun getting up mad each and every day….:o)
so that they would definitely know when I was serious!
But being an Okie, I know the way to talk southern is to take every one syllable word and make it two. It entails starting with the consonant and then kinda taking a bite out of the air and flavoring it with an ah sound and then finishing up with whatever is left of the word. Ice Cream then become Ahhh eece Creahyum. Coke become Cahhoke.
After 3 years being married to a southerner and living in the south I have a few questions and/or observations…
Unlike newspapers around the globe, the wedding announcements in the SOUTH(tm) feature only a glam shot of the woman…no man involved apparently.
Why are there no basements?
Must mayonnaise be the main ingredient in everything?
What’s with pimiento cheese spread?
There is a church on every corner…and their names are a collection of adjectives designed to show that this is the ONE. TRUE. CHURCH. Example: Christ’s Sanctified Holy Church of the Living Word of Our Lord Jesus Christ Bless His Heart.
cause one day after a party I was sleeping in a bit and my little ones took the leftover spread and spread it all down the hallway carpet!
That’s when you really wish you had a dog to clean it up. I think it looks like barf anyway, but I’m just a damn yankee.
To my mind, there’s nothin more attractive than a southern accent coming from the lips of a southern lady. I’m a New Yorker and have the great good fortune to be married to such a lady. To listen to her recall running barefoot in the horse barn as a little girl living on a peanut farm in Gawja is a delight and I don’t know how I ever got by without scrapple and sausage gravy with bisquits :o)
Oh, and for the record,
I love cornbread :o)
Must be why I married one of those “wicked” Bahhhstonians. š
Raleigh NC, befor e we moved out West when I was 7. I had the cutest accent and always said yes suh and yes ma’am and minded my ps and q’s ad nauseum. Somewhere around ten I’d lost that accent completely.
Funny how that works.
So would any of these girls ever like Democrats for national office? Does it happen? Would it have to be a southern Democrat like Carter?
No problem with that whatsoever. What I do hate is to hear non-Southerners run down good candidates who do have a Southern accent.
Thank you for posting this. I’m a Southerner living in exile in the Pacific Northwest. I’m from Tennessee, the only Southern state whose name is pronounced approximately the way it’s spelled. Moreover, I’m from Middle Tennessee, so the accent falls on the final syllable, not the first, which would mark me as being from East Tennessee, heaven forbid.
You know what I miss the most, even more than the musical qualities of Southern speech? Manners. Every time I’m back home, it’s a treat for me to just to go to a convenience store and have some total stranger behind the counter ask me how I’m doing and thank me for making a purchase. More often than not with a smile, too. It’s a small thing, but it counts for a lot.
Out here, I’ve learned to hide my accent. I’m pretty good at it, but there is one ineradicable difference between our dialect and the standard American dialect: we have no long “i”. The instrument used for fixing a flat, no matter how hard I try, is a “tar arn”. I figure that the absence of a long “i” is the price we paid for restoring a second person plural to the language.
Every now and then, I get homesick and have to fix myself a nice Southern meal. This can be challenging. Out of five grocery stores in my area, only one of them carries grits, and instant grits at that. It’s fortunate that I don’t much like okra, because I can’t find it anywhere. Don’t bother asking for sweet potatoes. The stock boy will just look at you funny. His people call them “yams”.
I know just what you mean. Manners are almost non-existent compared to the South. One way to give Democratic candidates instant credibility in the South (not necessarily votes, mind you, that would take just a BIT more work), is for the candidate and all associated staff to be very polite, including the sir and ma’am words.
But as for food, you eat Southern food at your peril outside of the South (half of my family hails from Mid and Western Tennessee, too). Cornbread up here is likely to be made with corn flour and have loads of sugar in it. Yuck! And we won’t even speak of how dressing is made.
Politicians might do well to offer food, too. Every local politician worth a damn holds barbecues or somesuch as fundraisers because they understand the deep emotional significance of food in the South.
When hispanic immigrants started to flood into Tennessee, I feared the worst. In actual practice, though, while there was (and is) inevitably some friction, Nashville developed a large hispanic population almost overnight without any major problems. I firmly believe it was in part because the new arrivals opened up restaurants in every nook and cranny in the city, and it is just constitutionally impossible for Southerners to hate anyone who comes bringing good food. There were some other mitigating cultural similarities — religion, family, and work ethic — but the clincher was the cuisine.
You know – I posted this as a kind of reminder. Where I am currently living – there are many people who display those negative aspects of being southern for all to see. It’s unfortunate – and not indicative of the south as a whole. My best friend from college used to say there were two south’s – I’d like to think the one characterized in the above diary stands for the best. Now – if only we could get rid of all those idiots who bring the south down with their prejudice and negativity. I `swayya’ that would be `right good’ indeed!
and the next woman who says “Bless your heart” to me is going to get smacked.
I’ve rarely heard this used by anyone under the age of 65, so slapping such a person might not be the best idea!
Actually, I hate this, too. It’s a form of “motherese”, best reserved for use with very very small children, e.g. age 2 and under.
that riles me like a scratch on a chalkboard
I actually hear it a lot – and not just from older ladies. I had no idea it was a backhanded thing…I thought it was just all the religion coming out all the time.
I’m a bit of a fish out of water here as you can well imagine. My hair is small, my nails are real and I don’t wear make up…I’m a freak in these parts. But I can chop my own firewood and build you a quinze if the weather turns foul. Southern Belles may know how to insult you nicely but Northern Girls will run you over with their snowmobiles and not even spill their beer.
I’m out of place down here too! And I’m one who thinks all the ma’am-ing and sir-ing sounds a bit disingenous most of the time.
I learned to call ladies older than me, “Miss”, from growing up on military bases. Any woman who was not your Mom was to be called, “MISS” and then their first name. IE Miss Jane, Miss Becky Sue.
I didn’t know it was a Southern thang till I didn’t say it to a woman from the South and she said, “well bless your heart, your mother didn’t raise you right.”
I just gave her a good ole Left Coast eye roll. š
Well, I’m in the northeast, and most of the kids I know call everyone Miss or Mister plus their first name…Miss Pam, Mister Tom, etc…I didn’t realize it was a southern thing.
Well bless your heart, didn’t your mama ever tell you not to listen to the blonde girl from California?? š
I am an American MUTT. š
I learned from here and there due to living ‘Here and There’. So don’t ask me cause I don’t know nothing but alot of hodge podge and most it only makes sense to me. š
Not at all, sir – or ma’am, as the case may be. I was taught that it was a sign of respect for another human being. Period! (I can hear the period in my great-grandmother’s voice.)
I don’t think I ever heard my grandparents or my living great-grand mother every speak to any adult without using sir or ma’am, even when they were in their 90s and speaking to a 20 year old. They were adamant that we were to respect every person (period), as a person, even if we did not respect something that they did (They had a few choice words to say about certain politicians in this regard.). In particular, they saw their children and grandchildren and greats surrounded by people who showed respect to some people and not others, and they were not having their offspring, etc. doing this. It must have been carved into their backbones somehow, and I believe it.
Here in yankeeland, the habit mostly gets taken as a sign that my dad was a career military man, which he wasn’t. Yes, I’ve seen people say sir and ma’am as a lie, but I do not think that is the intention of most who routinely use those forms of address.
Friend of mine who grew up here in the …well, Maryland isn’t exactly the north, as the Mason-Dixon line’s our northern border, but it’s not exactly the South, either. (Though sometimes I can find grits on the breakfast menu at restaurants…)
But she grew up here, without much accent to speak of (at least to my ears) and then went down to Duke University for college. Stayed down there, went to medical school, got married… you should HEAR her now. When she used to come up for Christmas (before her folks retired and moved down there too), it was like she had been born and bred in Carolina.
Clearly there’s something in the water down there. Or something… š
My heavens, don’t ya just know! I am a transplan in the south from southern Illinois, as if that really matters….:o) but I do understand every thing that has been said here.
My friends in the north are just so amazed as to my accent. What can I tell ya. Just you wait till I get excited or something like that…it is so hard to understand me, so says my friends…:o) I moved here a little over 20 years ago and boy howdy it is a different culture all the way….
My oldest grand-daughter moved here when she was just going on 1 and I can definately tell you she is so southern it aint funny!!!!! in all the ways!!!!!
I live in the northwest corner of Tennessee and when I go towards middle TN, it is amazing how things do change..just somewhat…
One of my nurse friends is from Alabama..now tell me what southern is…good good, bless her heart, I could hardly understand a word she said at first….:o) I now can translate in all southern language…:o) byt,,HI ya’ll from the south…I like cornbread too but simply can not find a way to like grits!!! no matter how it is prepared and as far as okra goes, you can have all of it you want, it is just not for me…besides they everything here on the hog but the bones…yak!!!! wow this is really a great place to be with all the lovely trees and cotton and flowers….and I do think on a good day they still are fighting the civil war with all the framing of things down this way. But, boy houdy, I do love these ppl down this way, bless their hearts..
You gave to me something I needed today and that was a good laugh…Thanks…..
Oh and yes, just try to follow the directions given by a true southerner…This takes all the patience of Jude for that one!!!!!!!!! be prepared to take notes for sure!!!!!!!!!!! :o)
I agree with you totally on grits – that’s Alabama & environs stuff, NOT good West Tennessee cooking. (My grandmother grew up in Gibson County, other relatives in Dyer, Weakley, & Henderson Counties). And Southern accents differ greatly by region, something movie makers (and many people outside the South) don’t seem to realize.
Just as many people don’t realize how different parts of the South were and are in attitudes toward Civil Rights, for example, to raise a more serious subject.
There are many things I love about the south, but So. Il. is my home and I love it there.
I think we grew up in matching households as to diet and Saturday activities! I know exactly where Salem is. My great grandpa was born outside of Centralia. I used to catch the Ill Central at Cairo, and then Carbondale, up to Chicago and then change trains to go to college in Minnesota.
When I was a child, we would catch the ferry at Cottonwood Point to go over to my aunt’s house between Finley and Dyersburg (we lived in the Mo bootheel at the time). That, of course has all been replaced by interstate.
My parent’s home is now in McCracken Co. KY so I see those parts of the world pretty often.
We’ve just done another of those favorite G.R.I.T.S. things: Old Home Week!
Hit post before I meant to.
We always heard Southern Illinois referred to as “Little Egypt”, because it was so Southern. It isnt exactly free of Southern accent, either, though quite mild by deep South standards!
When I do go back home, once I cross the mighty Miss. inot Il, the climate changes in many ways. I always have to remember to take something to keep me warm and to remember where I am going and to fit in. ;o)
I was working In Peoria, Il, when I moved down there. If you shuld ever get a chance to visit there, please do and to go and see the campus of IU. in Champaign/Urbana.
If one was to go and look at the civil war battle grounds here in TN you would see the different regiments and how they were laid out to fight. It is amazing how this state is/was torn between the north and the south in that time of history.
Just a little bit over the line in Vienna, Il, there is a underground railroad to see as a tourist. Amazing to say the least to plot the history way back then.
If I would have a choise in where I would love to live, after I retire, I love the middle of Virginia and/or the coastline of No. Carolina, just out of Cherry Point/Newbern area. I do, however, love the eastern shore of Maryland, tho.
choise = choice..sorry bout that
You can find a bit of a Southern accent even in South-central Illinois. I find myself slipping into a cross between a twang and a drawl when I go back to visit.
Hoooooooooooooo Laaaaaaaaaaaawwwwd, sounds like home ; )
BTW….I love GRITS ; )
peace all
Recently a young African American woman asked me if she could get a lift from Baton Rouge to New Orleans to check on her personal things. I was worried that she might not have enough food and water. “I just made groceries, before the storm,” she said.
In New Orleans we all talk like that, black and white. Whose your mamma?