Back To Your Roots

Knowing who you are in life is paramount if you want to know where you're headed. For instance if you know your Mom is a pack rat, you can sometimes (rare it's true) avoid it by staying aware. (Not you Mom I swear! Okay yes it is her...)
Nevertheless I am proud of my southern roots. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, I still feel like a Southerner even know I grew up mostly outside of NYC. My grandma, and Aunt and Uncle still live in Raleigh and when I visit I feel like I'm home.

Growing up, I used to love to watch Designing Women, even though it took place in Atlanta. I loved the southern accents and sassy attitudes of the southern ladies. One of my favorite lines from the show is by Mrs. Julia Sugarbaker:
"I'm saying this is the South. And we're proud of our crazy people. We don't hide them up in the attic. We bring 'em right down to the living room and show 'em off. See, Phyllis, no one in the South ever asks if you have crazy people in your family. They just ask what side they're on".

I just love that.

I love that we called my Great Grandmother Maamaa, that my father used to force feed us rutabaga, and that my mom makes the best fried chicken and gravy of all time. Sometimes, living in LA, I forget my roots. I need a reminder.

I keep this over my desk to help me remember who I really am.

"It must have been a Northerner who invented the questionnaire. A Southerner would have been more likely to think up an essay response.
Suppose a man is walking across a field. To the question "Who is that?" a southerner would reply: "Wasn't his grandaddy the one whose dog and him got struck by lightning on the steel bridge? Mama's third cousin -dead before my time- found his railroad watch in that eight-pound catfish's stomach the next summer just above the dam. The way he married for that new blue Cadillac automobile, reckon how come he's walking like he has on Sunday shoes, if that's who it is, and for sure it is".
A Northerner would reply to the same question, "That's Joe Smith". To which the Southerner might think (but be much too polite to say aloud), "They didn't ask his name! They asked who he is!"
-Harpers Magazine

I am a Southerner!