I Do NOT Talk Funny

Several years ago, when the mental health field was booming, and I was frantically trying to hire therapists to fill new positions, I got a call from a woman in California who was moving to Fannin County with her husband. They'd vacationed in the mountains here and fell in love with the countryside.

I returned the call and had to leave a message.

She did get the job, and we are still very good friends, some twenty years later. But she confessed that she replayed my message over and over, and she and her husband would laugh because of my heavy southern accent.

I hired another woman who was raised in Kentucky, but not the hills of apparently, and took to the city life of Atlanta like a fish, until she met one of "us" and fell in love.

She was a prissy little thing and made fun of the "I reckons" and "cain't, ain't, and ya'll". (I remember, after a couple of years of living  here, she slipped and said reckon. She slapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and then screamed.)

I worked with a nurse from South Georgia and it irritated her to no end that everyone was "fixin'" to do something, as in, "I'm fixin' to go to town, does Big Granny need any more snuff?"

Of course, much of the world doesn't understand that one southern accent is different from another southern accent. North Georgia people don't talk like Atlanta people and neither population talks like South Georgia. And that's just one state!

But those Yankees I speak of from time to time either think we sound 'cute' or 'stupid' or 'amusing'.

I really don't care anymore. In fact, if I'm speaking to someone of that mind set, I'm afraid I pour it on as heavily as I dare without them catching on that they are being toyed with.

When I was younger and my place of employment worked with northern folks a lot, via the telephone, I loved becoming Scarlett O'Hara. These fellas actually thought we all lived in antebellum mansions and wore hoop skirts to dinner parties. I didn't tell them any different, even though I don't think I'd ever seen an antebellum mansion.

Ah, but revenge is sweet.

The California girl? She reckons and ya'll's all the time.

And Miss Kentucky? (who is also still a dear friend) The same.

And she raises chickens.

Give us half a chance, and  ya''ll will never be the same.