A SOUTHERN RELOCATION FIELD GUIDE
Dedicated to all my Yankee Friends who are going to graduate school in the South.
I've fielded some weird questions lately.
As a native Southern person who spent the last six years in Boston, I've become an interpreter for some of my friends who are considering a Southern relocation.
When Southern people hear that Northern, Western, Mid-Atlantic, or Canadian people have decided to move to the South, they respond as though a diabetic had decided to finally start taking insulin. Like it's a reasonable, life-saving measure.
I told one of my clients that my friend had been debating between Columbia and the University of North Carolina, but ultimately decided on North Carolina. Her response?
"Well, thank God for that."
This is the attitude that you too should have. Consider the classic hymn, Amazing Grace: "I once was blind/ But now I see." Your Southern Relocation is your saving grace. Southern people will ask you how you like the South. Tell them it's the best thing that ever happened to you. Seriously. I'm telling you, if you want to avoid an uncomfortable afternoon hearing about how Nancy Pelosi is trampling on the Constitution, I'm handing you the keys.
If they ask you what church you go to, the correct answer is not: "I'm spiritual, but non-practicing." There are two correct answers: "Grace Church" or "Christ Church." There are probably 6,000 Grace Churches between Chattanooga and Louisville, and every Christ Church in the South is a different denomination. You could be a Catholic; you could be a snake handler. I have no idea, and neither does anybody else. One time, I got invited to go to Grace Church. I ended up at the wrong one, and spent twenty minutes clearing wild turkeys off my car.
On that note, don't get offended when somebody invites you to go to church with them. They're not asking because they have a preternatural sense that you're a member of the Hartford Secular Humanist Association. Treat it like a handshake. And if you go, don't worry about getting sneak-baptized. A few of my friends have expressed real concern about this. There is no such thing as sneak-baptism.
Not all Southerners enjoy country music. They don't have to. They have many other things going for them, like a pleasing accent, the ability to fry chicken, church membership, and excellent aim. As a non-Southerner, you must not disparage country music. You have nothing going for you. You drop your R's, eat lobster, and voted for Obama. You are fresh as a newborn babe. You may hate country music, but the ability to name-drop Florida Georgia Line may be the only thing between you and a table at the Waffle House.
"Why on earth would I want to be friends with Southern People?" You ask. "They sound like a bunch of gun-wielding, sneak-baptizing (which I'd like to remind you, isn't real), skeet-shooting nut-jobs." It's a little known-fact above Kentucky, but Southern People are some of the most interesting people in the world. For starters, Southern People have shockingly adept vocabularies. They may use six double-negatives in a row, but they drop "capricious" and "altercation" like cow patties in a wheat field.
They also love hugging people, and it's not a polite hug. It's a subtle probing of your soul to see if anything's missing. Southern hugs are the best. The first time you cry in front of a Southerner, don't take it personally or feel compelled to see a therapist about it. It's totally normal. As they're patting your back and telling you it's okay and feeding you toast soaked in pork fat, just be aware that your tears are salty confirmations of the emotional superiority of the American South.
So now you've cried in front of them, and you're feeling a bit weird because all of the sudden you've gone from a Long Island Jew to a fake member of Christ Church, and you've got WKDF blaring in your Prius, and you're probably wondering what the hell is going on.
And this is the magic of the Southern Relocation.
You would be doing yourself a great disservice if you stay isolated within your academic communities. It's entirely possible for you to spend the next two to seven years within the relative cultural safety of your university. If you want to grumble about the bigotry of the campus Christian organizations and mock local politics, that's totally doable. They'll go on thinking liberals are bleeding-heart homosexual flag-burners, and you'll go on thinking whatever you think, and nobody will learn anything, and we'll all go on awkwardly coexisting.
But I hope you don't. Besides, I'm pretty sure that wall is on its way down anyways.
