Boy still can't get over how much we smalltalk over here. I hadn't noticed until he pointed it out, but I do chat with virtually everyone I have some kind of interaction with - people on the till in shops, train conductors, the delivery guy. Mostly about the weather, it seems like. He finds it very strange, which now I guess might be his New England stoicism coming through.

most people can break it down to fractions and usually know when a relatively close ancestor immigrated

I've had those conversations, enthusiastically. However, no branch of my family has been big on preserving the ways of my ancestors: I never learned to speak Russian; my Italian recipes that were handed down to me by my (not Italian, married into it) grandmother came from cookbooks; the branch of the family that we thought was Scots appears, after much research, to more likely be English, etc. Sometimes that makes me sad, losing heritage and all, but we also shed a lot of fucked-up-ness. Making way for new and different kinds of fucked-up-ness, but that's what progress is all about, right?

Edited for punctuation

Sigh. I hate hate hate when students don't do well on a test I give. I offered study sessions all last week because I know how hard this stuff is (creation myths/Genesis stories), but it looks like a lot of them are bombing. I thought I taught it pretty well, but maybe not. Dammit.

But it's fun chatting with strangers!! One of the most interesting people I've ever met was a NYC cabbie, who fit the old stereotype of the older lifelong New York resident, complete with the NY accent and living in and raising his family in an apartment and stories about how life is like there. Fascinating stuff. My mom and sister (who were sitting in the back seat of the cab while I rode in front due to no more room in back) were wondering what we talked about, and were very surprised that I had such a great conversation with him.

Whenever we go to Tulsa or Birmingham to see the families, I have to make the mental adjustment that people are going to like, talk to me. (And also accept the fact that I will cause DH endless amusement with the way my accent shifts from one sentence to the next depending on whether I'm talking to him or to someone local. I don't do it on purpose.)

My fellow Southerners (and anyone interested in such things) might enjoy Jim Webb's book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. Webb romanticizes his/our past a bit, but it's still a fascinating and informative read, and for me a mirror in which I recognized myself and my family. I reviewed it here: [link]

If I had to label myself by region I think I'd say I'm Floridan or North Floridan rather than being Southern. Dad's family is definitly Southern, Mom's from Oklahoma. And around here, with the universities and state government there's such a mix of people from various parts of the state and country. But if you go a few towns over, then yes, you are definitely in the South and can feel it. Of course a quick trip north will take you to Georgia.

Visitors to Atlanta often say, "Everyone was so friendly. They all smiled at me."

And finish it with "...and it bugged the crap out of me." Or maybe that was just me, for about the first year I lived there. Eventually I grew to really like it there, but it took a real shift in mindset.

They talk more down here. Which can be nice and friendly, and other days it can bug the crap out of me because it seems to demand I be in a friendly mood all the damn time.

Heh. I can and will talk to pretty much anybody. Old truckers at the dive bar, little old ladies in the grocery, homeless people, you name it. I don't normally jump right in like Mr. Jane, but once I hear something I can speak to or someone speaks to me, it's on.

I would drive most of you insane.

I *hate* when people I don't know try to talk to me. It's like they can't stand the idea of silence or something. Why is it friendly and courteous to intrude on a stranger's privacy?

Signed, Surly Northeasterner, what are you looking at?