I Could Have Sworn I Was Born Here......

I'm going to give you all a little piece of unsolicited advice.  You may do with it what you will, but if you choose to print this out and cram it somewhere, I don't need to know about it.

The advice I am going to give you is absolutly unoversal, and should you chose not to heed it, could make your life much more difficult.

Never.  Ever.  Assume you know where someone is from, where they were raised, how they were raised, or their background.  Always let them, or facts, tell you.  

Assumning you know someone will undoubtedloy get you into troiuble.  Or  fight at a PTA meeting.

Tonight, as I was being jumped on, I was told repeatedly that I didn't understand something because I wasn't from the Bible Belt.  

Ummm........

Wrong.

I was born and raised in North East TN, which is much more of a Bible Belt than this is.  I was raised in a town that had a massive protest when Applebee's tried to open up because the sign was going to say "Bar and Grill" and bars are to be hidden, never put out on display.  This was when I was in High School, too.  Not back in the 50's.

I was raised in a Pentecostal church.  Look it up.  

I get the religious side of things.  

My sister happens to be an associate pastor at her church.  Not that her job means anything as far as my credintials, but I'm pretty sure that if I do something totally antireligious, she is going to call me out on it.  

Howwver, tonight, I kept being told I just didn't understand.  I just don't get it.  I am not from "here".  

I am right now, personally offended.  Perhaps I should take it as a total compliment that people don't view me as being from "here".  After all, if this is the land of religious zealots who don't want to understnad technology for fear that Satan is always behind a cmputer, then I'm good with not being from "here".  

What, you may ask, was all the hub bub about?

Bar codes.  

You know how everyone has a bar code for everything now.  There are bar codes on your grocery store cards.  There are bar codes on every product you buy.  Really, look around, and they are every where.  People even have apps on their smart phones to be able to scan them.
However, when it comes to membership in a organization I am part of, they just won't fly. 

Apparently, people here would totally reject it, and at some point in time in the very contentious discussion, someone likened them to the mark of the beast.  

I kid you not.  

I couldn't make that up.  

All of this was thrown at me, me the person who didn't even suggest car codes but had looked into the feasibility for someone else, because I couldn't understand people.  I am an outsider.  So, I took the brunt of everything.

I may not sound like people do here, or act or think like them.  I may be open to change and multiculturalism, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything about here, too.  I've lived more, experience more, and been through more than many people.
Do not assume you know me.

I get that a lot of crazy things happen in California.  People out there want to ban Oreos, and that stands as evidence enough of some of the goofy things that happen, but goofy things happen everywhere.  Like people flipping out about bar codes.  It just so happens, though, that people in CA wouldn't be afraid of bar codes.  They are much more open to people of different cultures and experiences, because everyone in CA is from a different culture or experience.
So, if you want to call me that mom from CA, go ahead.  I may have been born and raised in East TN, but if being open minded and forward thinking equals being from CA, I'll take it in a heart beat.
In the mean time, if you want to know what I think, how I feel, or about my experience in life, ask.  I'll be glad to tell you.  All the while trying to plan my escape back to California, land of people who embrace bar codes.  

Oh My Ears

After My Husband and I were married, it took a couple of months for me to move away to be with him.  He was in schools, and in between a real duty station.  So, I was waited.  When the time came, I moved to Norfolk, Virginia to be with him.  While that is closer to northern VA, and not the same as the real south, it is  still in Virginia, and it wasn't so different that I was taken aback by my surroundings.
Our next big move was to Corpus Christi, Texas.  That did bring with is some serious culture shock.  We often called it Northern Mexico.  It was different.  It wasn't bad, though, at all.  It was just an adjustment for this girl who was born and raised in small, fairly homogeneous, town in Tennessee.  That area of Texas is a little strange in the culture.  Its sort of like if the south and Mexico had a baby, they would have that region.  It is a mix of the cultures and traditions, I suppose.  So, in some ways, it still felt familiar while opening me up to a lot.
We lived in TX for a few years, and finished out his tour there.  Then, after a more short stints for school, we moved to San Diego.
Talk about culture shock.  That was it.  I'm not sure that moving to a foreign land would be that much more.  It wasn't something I was prepared for, at all.  Nothing felt familiar, and people automatically pointed out how different I was the moment I opened my mouth and spoke.  I had a southern accent, and it set people off everywhere I went.  I got grilled all the time about where I was from.  Sometimes it was uncomfortable.
The crazy thing is, compared to my home town, and most of the people I know, I have very little accent.
Seriously.
The longer I was away, the softer it got, too.  My friends could tell when I had been around my mom, if she had been visiting, because it would flair up a little.
I began to really work on my diction, and I hoped that it was as clear as possible.  In fact, when we first moved back here, people had a hard time understanding me.  They still do occasionally.  I spoke quickly and with little affectation, making me sound different from them.  During Girl Scout Cookie training for my parents, I had one Dad who could not understand me.  I tried to speak more slowly.  I tried to speak more clearly.  I think that made it worse.  Eventually his daughter started repeating everything for him in the typical slow southern drawl and he got it.
The thing is, the longer I am here, the more I hear myself returning to that.  It is impossible not to.  That is all my ears hear.  My brain will rewire itself again and eventually I will start sounding like that.
I am already using more colloquialisms.  The other day, at the end of a phone conversation with a CA friend, I said "Well, go on then".  When you read it, it could sound hateful, but when said in the Southern way, it is simply a way to say good bye, without any hint of ill feelings.  Its just the way they talk.  I realized when she laughed that she might have thought I was being rude, but in fact, its sort of a common phrase that I have already started to use.
I hear the girls say things all the time that amaze me, and not necessarily in a good way.  In particular, I realize that The Littlest One will have a strong southern accent.  She will probably be the only native San Diegan to speak with a southern drawl.  Already, she says "byyeeee" instead of bye.
I hope to go visit San Diego this summer, if possible.  If we do, I plan on re immersing myself in the culture there.  I want to hang out with my friends, visit Balboa Park, and do a lot of the touristy things we shun when you actually live there, but most of all, I want to just listen for a while, and soak up as much of the sound of speech as possible.

They Have Got To Be Kidding

Instead of waiting in the monstrous pickup line to get The Big Girls after school yesterday, The Littlest One and I actually had to get out in the rain and wait outside for them since we have Girl Scouts on Tuesday at school now.  As The Littlest One and I stood outside, snuggling under the portico and trying to stay warm and dry, I started listening to the parents around me have a conversation about the weather, which is crappy, to say the least.  It has been raining for days.  Days and days, and days.  I think we are about to get Biblical here with the rain.
One mom started the typical weather discussion, because that's what you do when you are stuck outside with a bunch of people you barely know; discuss the weather.  She felt like we weren't going to have a cold winter, but that it would be unusually wet.  The other agreed.  Then, they began to discuss how we would have more bugs next year if it weren't cold enough.  The discussion went on.

What I took from all of that would be three very important things.

First, this hasn't been a cold winter.  Are they friggin kidding me??  I have been freezing to death.  The temps are regularly in the 20's when the sun goes down, and I am thrilled to death now when we hit the 50s.  Granted, we did have two days where it was very warm, into the 60s and even hit 70, but that was two days out of an entire season thus far.  I don't think that warrants tipping the scales alone.  So, that means that they generally expect it to be even colder than the days where we are hovering around freezing all the time.
I can't do this.  As a general rule, I don't consider myself a weakling.  I think I have survived a lot in my life so far, but if its going to be in the teens for months here, I need to move.  I can not take that.  I will shrivel up and freeze to death.  You can find me by looking for the big block of ice with all the flowing red hair from it.  Until, of course, my hair freezes and breaks off.  I know, morbid and extreme, but that's how the thought of freezing makes me feel.  Hate it.

Second, this is a lot of rain.  That is actually good to know.  I thought it was going to be like this all the time.  I'm no fan of rain, either.  Having had of those horrible car crashes that make the best stories when i was 18, all as a result of immature driving practices and way too much rain, I don't like to drive in it.  At all.  So, being a grown up with grown up responsibilities that I have to do, like take my children to school and pick them up, even if it is raining is a little unnerving to me.  I'm glad to know that this is an extraordinary amount of rain for the area.  I was beginning to think this was normal, and totally freak out.  I will be upset if this is a wet winter.  I don't like it, but at least I can have a little peace knowing it shouldn't always be like this.  With as many rainy, overcast days as we have had, I was beginning to think I should start looking out for sparkly vampires to live here.

Third, there will be more bugs.  I hate bugs.  I hate them as much as I hate the rain.  I am allergic to bees, and the mosquitoes here are insane.  You can not step outside with out insect repellent or you will be eaten alive by them during the summer.  Many people here have screened in porches just so that you can go outside.  Now, if the winter isn't cold enough to kill the a ton of the bugs, it will be far worse this year than last.  I can not imagine more bugs.  This is horrific.

This was not a pleasant conversation for me to hear, and then think about.  I am already hating the weather, and it looks like i need to prepare for the worst of all things I hate for a while.  IF I can take comfort in anything they said, it was that the don't think it will get much colder this time, and that is great, because I don't think I can handle much colder.

If anyone of my friends who live in California would like to rescue me, I am open to it.  You can find me, at home, trying to stay warm and dry, huddled up in the corner with a can of bug spray.