That country twang…

Posted

“Hey, Ted!” Walked back into my house from an errand and greeted a neighbor who was kindly being a handyman. Ted was on the deck and only vaguely heard me. Stepping back inside, he asked that I repeat myself. “Hey.” Easy-peasy. Done.

Not. Not done at all. I stopped in my tracks, asking myself if I’d really just said “Hey!” (It’s not as if I haven’t said it 10,000 times before.) You ever have those mini-secs when a door opens from your past and a hazy memory mists its way into your consciousness? “Hey,” such an ordinary word a minute ago was now in freeze frame, my past and present realities in such contrast. I felt a bit time-drunk since my past aversive feelings regarding “Hey” pulled me in a very different direction than my current feelings.

That’s the rabbit hole I went down. And all because I said “Hey.”

I’ve lived in North Carolina for 28 years, a “say hey” Southern state, with many other renowned colloquialisms as well. However, I wasn’t raised to use “Hey” as a greeting. Not at all. It was proper to say “Hello” or “Hi,” but “Hey” — nope. Somehow, my early exposure to “Hey” left me believing it was a country rube term. Using “Hey” was country and ignorant. I wince while writing this… I’m glad my memory is still functional at this age but am sometimes aghast at the things I do recall.

So let’s just clean out that closet of my “country rube” judgments. I was a big-city-raised Houston girl. Southern, but kind of not. Somewhere along the cultural path of my growing-up years, I became a bit of a despotic grammarian — correcting people’s language in my head as they talked. Can’t really pin down the source of my country rube-itis, but it matters not at this late date. What matters were my ongoing stringent judgments regarding the intelligence of folks whose deep Southern drawls and colloquialisms I had difficulty understanding. Wincing again. (The trials of being human, replete with my own sometimes-challenged views of humanity.)

In my early North Carolina years, colloquialism-wise, my judgments included:

Might could;

Mash that button;

Hey, honey (Jeez, I was a feminist!);

Pop top (No, no, it’s a can of soda!)

However, living with and experiencing real people in my adoptive state took over. Almost imperceptibly, like water dripping on a rock, my drawl and colloquialism judgments just seemed to wear away. And, my despotic grammarian took early retirement! (Bless her heart