pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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SOUTHERN GIRLS AND ELECTRONICS

I was talking about the peculiarities of the South earlier, which Diaryland's Refusal also commented on when he wrote that he found Absalom, Absalom "a little too incomprehensible" and had

a certain sense that the story was being deliberately obscured—it was probably being obscured to show how memory works and how different people's viewpoints construct different perspectives on the story. Maybe some Southerner could tell me if the civil war resulted in a lasting shortage of punctuation in the South.

Funny. I could have sworn it was all that sweet tea.

Anyway, someone else wrote the following humorous piece, which I received via email with no credit. I can vouch for the Bless Your Heart bit and provide a story illustrating just how southerners use the term as a weapon.

After my mother shot herself and was subsequently handcuffed—attempting suicide is a crime in South Carolina—and hauled off to the ER and then the mental ward with a heavily bandaged head, several blue-haired church ladies showed up at our back door.

Daddy told me to tell them that we didn't need anything and to not let them in, and I told them just that as they craned their necks to look inside. Then one of them said, "Well, it's a good thing your mama didn't die because she would have gone to Hell, you know. Bless her heart."

That still pisses me off.

Anyway, here's the piece:

Someone once noted that a Southerner can get away with the most awful kind of insult just as long as it's prefaced with the words "Bless her heart" or "Bless his heart." As in, "Bless his heart, if they put his brain on the head of a pin, it would roll around like a BB on a 6-lane highway."

I was thinking about this the other day when a friend was telling about her new transplanted northern friend who was upset because her toddler is just beginning to talk and he has a southern accent. My friend, who is very kind and, bless her heart, cannot do a thing about those thighs of hers, was justifiably miffed about this. After all, this woman had CHOSEN to move to the South a couple of years ago. Can you believe it?

Said her friend, "A child of mine is going to be "taaaallllkkin liiiike thiiiissss."!

Now, don't get me wrong. Some of my dearest friends are from the North, bless their hearts. I welcome their perspective, their friendships, and their recipes for authentic Northern Italian food. I've even gotten past their endless complaints that you can't find good bread down here. And the heathens, bless their hearts, don't like cornbread!

We've already lost too much. I was raised to say "swanee," not swear, but you hardly ever hear anyone say that anymore, I swanee you don't. And I've caught myself thinking twice before saying something is "right much," "right close," or "right good" because non-natives think this is right funny indeed.

I have a friend from Bawston who thinks it's hilarious when I say I've got to "carry" my daughter to the doctor or "cut off" the light. She also gets a giggle every time I am "fixin'" to do something. And, bless their hearts, they don't even know where "over yonder" is, or what "I reckon" means!

My personal favorite was my aunt, saying, "Bless her heart, she can't help being ugly, but she could've stayed home."

•

Some of my South Carolina relatives still use "I swanee" and the occasional string of triple modal—as in, "We might should oughta go soon"—and I find these regionalisms charming. Really like them, in fact, and try to write them down so that I can incorporate them into my novel.

South Carolinians from the coastal and piedmont regions also eat boiled peanuts, which are soft and extremely salty and I just love them, despite the fact that some people call them burled peanuts. They also call the Cooper River the Cuppah Riiiiiivuh—and, believe me, if you drove on the Cuppah Rivuh bridge back when it was two-way and one of the most dangerous bridges in the nation, I swanee you would never do it again.

Rural South Carolinians also pronounce picture pitcher, orange urnge, and oil earl.

Me, I just can't say the word broil without thinking about it for a good ten minutes in advance. Don't know why and it's an odd affliction to have, I know—and an unfortunate one, since I really like London broil and would like to order it out on occasion—but the word just doesn't want to come out of my mouth. It's a residual speech therapy/stuttering thing, I suppose. Most words eventually came out of my mouth after much practice, but that one word still stops my mouth short for some reason.

But enough of that. It is 10:30 PM and I have just returned from painting Venus on the half shell onto two eight-by-eight-foot flats in preparation for the chorus concert on the fourth. Took the whole damn weekend to build the props and paint the flats, but they are done now.

My Venus is baby blue with red and yellow hair with streaks of green and white (Andy Warhol–style with some of my own touches thrown in), set against an avocado background with huge sponged sections of red around her. I also wrote Cafe Venus in a really cool font across the top of the flat. And it looks good.

High 80s today and the garage was sweltering. We finished around dinnertime and jumped into the pool to cool off.

I carefully placed my phone, keychain, glasses, and watch on the table, stripped off my tank top and dove into the pool in my shorts and jogging bra.

Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the electronic key to my car was still in my shorts pocket.

Needless to say, it no longer works.

It's one of those fancy switchblade keys and I figured hey, I'll just unlock the door the old-fashioned way instead of double-clicking; no big deal.

Uh-huh.

My key opened the car just fine, but the alarm light was still blinking and so the alarm went off as soon as I put the key in the ignition. Since you double-click to turn the alarm off (natch), it continued to honk and blink and honk while I grabbed my manual and laptop and locked the beeping (in both senses of the word) car.

Caught a ride home with Operagrrl and will walk to the VW dealership in the morning and get them to program a new key for me—probably to the tune of several hundred dollars, sigh, which is a nice precursor to the $1,200 check I'll be handing to the dentist come Tuesday morning.

That key is big. You'd think I would have noticed that it was still in my pocket, ya know? Damn my baggy clothes!

Anyway, not enough art on demand yet this weekend, so I am going upstairs now to finish those illustrations. They're boring me to tears, frankly, but I promised to deliver them tomorrow and so need to finish them tonight. Sigh. Will make a nice cup of hot tea first though.

•

(Monday) All right. So I am in one big-ass Dodge Dakota king-cab rental pick-up truck for at least two days. Had to get the little bug towed to the dealer, sigh. The key is $225—had to pay for it in advance—but I'll need to get it programmed, too. And pay for towing. And decide whether or not to repair the door lock actuator—which was apparently already broken. And this is one of the many reasons why you should never buy a Volkswagen or keep one past warranty.

It was funny listening to Lou Reed and John Cage's Songs for Drella—a CD about Andy Warhol that they made after he died—this morning, because they just don't belong in a big-ass pick-'em-up truck.

So Glittergrrl announced that she wants to extend the four months she asked me to keep her daughter to three years, but she is still not willing to sign any paperwork saying that she will send me her child-support payments. So I took a deep breath and said no, thinking she would surely agree to sign the paperwork then. But nope, she still won't—which means one thing only: She has no intention of helping support her own child.

I'm not sure why she neglected to inform me of this extension till now, but maybe she was thinking I'd cave if it came down to the wire.

At this point, she's trying to hand her poor daughter off to anyone who will take her.

I feel incredibly guilty about this whole thing, even though it is the right decision for me. But, mostly, I just feel horrible about this whole situation and worry about little CeeCee.

Well. It's settled. (sigh) And my heart hurts. And I have get back to work.

1:40 p.m. - 2005-05-23

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