Southerness and Sickness
The only downside to Southern friendliness? Sitting next to its embodiment on an airplane.
I have a head cold. Nothing major, just a stuffy head, an achy neck, and a scratchy throat. But being on an airplane with a stuffy head is not fun. Whenever the cabin pressure changed I had to hold my earlobes over my ears. Partly because I hoped to reduce the searing pain, partly because I was afraid my eardrums would burst and I didn’t want to bleed all over myself in public.
(I really hope I don’t have a medical emergency in front of people. Or if I do that it knocks me unconscious. In a graceful, Victorian-fainting-couch-reach-for-her-smelling-salts kind of way.)
(And God forbid I go into labor in a public place - my children would be motherless.)
I spent much of my flight home holding my ears, sniffing, and hoping to land (in Baltimore). I’m not the best flyer - yet - so I actually spend a lot of my time on planes strategizing about how I can throw myself onto my seat cushion in case of an emergency water landing (I still don’t get how that’s supposed to happen in 2 cubic feet of space, so my strategy usually goes: 1) realize we’re in an emergency water landing, 2) discover hidden super powers). I also read about expensive vacations to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion I’ll never take. And I completed the airline magazine crossword puzzle (I finished the "Challenging" one in 20 minutes. This is a rare occurrence - those Diamondback crosswords I did in between classes really paid off! So did that Greek and Roman Mythology course - you always have some minotaur or Trojan war clue, and what better way to spend $15,000 in student loans? I could be a famous crossword puzzler someday, people! Do you realize the meaning this would bring to my life? Or at least how much easier it would be to explain my job? More on that later.).
As friendly as I am (though some readers of my last post would disagree), I was really not in the mood to talk.
Not only that, I couldn’t talk. It was the end of the day with a scratchy throat and I had lost my voice. So I planted myself in the seat closest to the door, leaned my head against the window, closed my eyes, and held my ears.
Of course, I had planted myself next to The Guy. And he wanted to talk.
"Are you goin’ to Baltamore, or are you goin’ on te Raleigh?"
"Are you goin’ ha-ome fer Thanksgivin’?"
"Do ya live en Nashville?"
"I’ll bet yer real glad you have sech a short flight ha-ome."
This Nashvillian quality is actually one of the things I’m starting to love. The friendliness, the approachability, the openness. It makes you let down your guard and start to trust people. It reminds you how to socialize and makes you feel confident. It leads to friends (please?). It is a quality I hope to acquire everyday, one I aspire to obtain, one I think of when I wake up and hope to myself that the longer I live here the more down-to-earth I will become. When I encounter it, whether in my ballet class, in a convenience store, or at a restaurant, I feel so uplifted I drive home reading the highway signs to Memphis or Louisville or Old Hickory or Goodletsville and thinking of all those towns with all those friendly inhabitants and think to myself "I really like it here. I really, really do."
Okay, so maybe I read those highway signs because I’m trying not to get lost, but the sentiment is still there.
This was the first time this friendliness was anything but wonderful. I felt guilty for wanting to shut him out. I felt like I wanted to be the embodiment of anything but Southerness - of Northerness? Of callousness? I felt horribly coldhearted, jaded, and almost cruel.
Then I felt I really just wanted to get a blanket, curl up under my emergency water landing floatation device, and cut off my ears (in private).
Besides, he kept trying to copy my crossword puzzle answers. The nerve!
