Friends and foes alike have tried for years to figure out how to make this blabbermouth shut her pie hole. The solution all along? Drop this Southerner in the thick of the Northern Midwest.
It seems that as a Southern transplant in a Northern state, I’ve plummeted into some sort of language vortex, a strange state of limbo where I can’t understand anyone — here or back home. Fabulous.
During a recent phone conversation with a friend back home, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread when our conversation came to a halt. My dear friend had posed a question that may as well have been in Russian; I couldn’t understand what the heck she had asked. My friend erupted into laughter; she accused me of already losing my ability to understand Southern-speak. She had asked, “How’s the settlin’?” Apparently the G-dropping I’ve been doing my entire life has suddenly become a foreign concept.
I left this conversation a bit sad I was losing my Southern-ness but also a little excited that maybe I was starting to fit in to my new surroundings.
That sense of excitement quickly fizzled while ordering some items at a retail establishment the other day.
“Would you like a byeg for that?” the gal behind the counter asked. Several “whats” and puzzled expressions later, I understood she was asking if I wanted a a handled sack to contain my items.
Whoops.
The Frozen Southerner 