Ode to the South

Mira Sydow, Editor-in-Chief

I’m a southerner. 

I haven’t always been, but I think I always will be.

I was born in Morton, Pennsylvania, which is really just another way of saying Semi-Poor, White Philly. I grew up on mud-infused snow, thrice-daily trips to Wawa, and the playground of Swarthmore College. I spent my summers at my grandparents’ house in borderline Amish country, and Philly and New York occupied my winters, creating blurry memories of dazzling lights and thick snow. 

I wore jackets twice my body size, slicked my braids into my hat with melted snow, and attempted to climb the massive, knotted tree in our front yard. 

After two years, my family welcomed my sister.

We danced around our home office with pillows balanced on our heads, crafted stories among the clouds that my uncle painted on my bedroom ceiling, and poured ketchup on Mac n’ Cheese with our first set of Nair neighbors (there were two sets; it’s another long story). The University of Pennsylvania dominated my father, mother, and babysitter’s wardrobes.

Then we moved.

Atlanta was indescribable, certainly not the antithesis of the North, but not similar.

Our house was a pile of dirt, and our second set of Nair neighbors were unyielding, observing us cautiously from their back deck across our devastated yard. When I met my best friend, he stood at the bottom of his basement stairs gripping a small, metal baseball bat. They didn’t seem like exemplary Southerners, from what I’d heard in tales of my grandmother’s cute, Texan upbringing.

But slowly, metaphorically and physically, I warmed to Southern hospitality. 

I learned to always say yes, especially to elderly white people, to say y’all and ma’am until they felt like home in a contraction, to only go to Waffle House at odd hours of the night, and to trust black people on the road more than any other driver, because they had to drive safest.

I learned that there are countless subtleties to a Southern drawl, that breakfast food is the best food, and that country music really does grow on you, even if it’s all the exact same. 

I discovered that sweet tea isn’t that great, and to this day, I’m still convinced that everyone who genuinely enjoys it is part of some cosmic joke.

I embraced Northern stereotypes too -- that the people were colder than the winters, that business tycoons and corporate lawyers only made physical contact to shove you out of the way. New York, and visions of an idealistic future between silver skyscrapers and flashing lights, lost its star quality in the face of the South’s laziness. Life didn’t have to be fast when it could be trudged through, getting a secondhand high just from being in a MARTA car, crawling along in six lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, and strolling through a metropolis that isn’t walkable by any means. 

Nonetheless, ignoring my gradual turnaround, I still renounced the southern label. 

Being southern meant thinking backwards. It meant hunting for sport and wearing camo from head to toe (I wore a camouflage jacket once in fifth grade, and one of my teachers tried to run me over because she, ‘thought I was a hunter’).

But, as much as it initially pained me, I’m just as southern as the white man with the overgrown scruff who sneers at me at the grocery store, and just as southern as the grizzled black woman who pierces his cocky demeanor with her dusty eyes. I’m not a southern stereotype, but neither is most of the south. To be a southerner is often to be tragically misunderstood (but not in the Civil-War context; let that be abundantly clear). 

Maybe my veins don’t run dark with the low-sugar syrup of Coca-Cola. Maybe I’ve never had Chick-fil-a because I like gay people (and maybe I think I’m better than the rest of the South because of that). 

But, as I move up North again next year, without the name-brand jacket that my future roommates recommended (apparently northern sororities discriminate by parka prestige), I’ll still be a southerner. 

I’ll be damned if I’m anything else.