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Knowing

I do not have what it takes to be a real Southern lady.

I already figured on this, but it's official now. My landlady's housemate, who is from Mississippi, has brought the point home by walking around being a real Southern lady. The contrast is shockingly stark.

First of all, she dresses like a grownup for work. She wears suits and dresses. And high heels every day. She probably remembers to take stuff to the dry cleaners.

I wear jeans and Chucks. Then again, I am in a room by myself with the door closed while she has to interact with other humans daily. I try to remember to wear a collared shirt on those rare days when I have to deal with humans from outside the Office. I have a small bag of dry cleaning sitting by the door that I really need to remember to carry down to the cleaners. It's been there a month.

Secondly, she has a purse dog which sometimes travels in an actual purse. The purse dog has little outfits. She walks the purse dog while she's wearing her suits and heels. On such occasions the purse dog often wears a little topknot bow which matches the suit. Picture perfect for a Savannah square.

I have two cats, each of which outweighs the purse dog by a factor of two or three. If I tried to put the cats in outfits, the outfits would end up shredded, eaten, and barfed up on my bed. Or the cats might just sigh and fall asleep. You never know.

These items are more lady-specific than Southern-specific, but I'm getting there. It's a food thing: pecan pralines. (She says "prah-leen", I say "pray-leen".)

She makes them. She got up at 5:00 am on Christmas Eve to make a batch so she could hand me two pounds of pralines in an Ann Taylor bag on my way out at 7:00. ("Oh, I like to get up early," she said, "I'm just a morning person." "Oh?" I nodded, still stunned from rapid ingestion of cappuccino.)

They were great, by the way, like mainlining butter and brown sugar. I ate one at work that day. Anymore, refined sugar makes me kind of grouchy and I needed to get a good grouch going for something I was writing, so a praline was perfect. Most of the rest disappeared down the maws of my family.

So anyway, whatever it is that gives a lady the drive to get up before dawn and make candy for a bunch of people she doesn't even know … that is something I lack. As long as I stay out of the deep South (it must be in the water? the humidity?), I don't see myself developing it either.