Why I Don’t Hate My Hometown

Subtitle: Even Though Sometimes I Do

I’m home this week. Yes – I used the word home. I used to have qualms with that. A few years ago, I though that I got to decide where home was, and that it was going to be North Carolina, and then, I hoped, somewhere else.

But of course that was stupid because you don’t really get to decide where “Home” is – I mean “Home” with the capital H, home as in what made you and not, as Dolly Parton would say, where you hang your wig.*

 

I haven’t spent more than six weeks in Columbus since the summer after my freshman year of college, when I worked at the now defunct Goody’s department store, where I did thinks like clean literal crap out of the fitting room and discount jeans that were missing the attached thong.

 

As a result, I spent most of my time in Columbus full of angst. Mostly, I thought about leaving and dreamed about leaving and made plans to leave. I didn’t actually rethink the whole leaving the south business until I spent a few summers in Connecticut, when I realized that things sort of suck equally everywhere, only, some places do it with more character. I will give you a hint: Connecticut, and certain parts of North Carolina, do not suck with character.

 

I think I realized that I actually sort of loved my hometown when I started dating these guys who were from “The North” who said really stupid, banal things about the south and about Georgia. And what was particularly interesting was that all of their jokes about how provincial stuff is down here were actually pretty trite and boring. And also that they did crap like play the banjo, while simultaneously despising the south, while also not really getting the irony behind it.

 

Bless their hearts.

 

Mostly I think they were jealous that their home states hadn’t produced Carson McCullers, or Flannery O’Connor, or Alice Walker. (The list goes on, actually, but I’m tired, so I’m stopping it there). Also, I don’t know if they quite had the capacity to get the color and character of the south, in all its faults and glory.

 

This isn’t to say that the south is perfect – it isn’t at all, not at all – or that there aren’t some non-southerners who can get and appreciate the south. That’s just to say I’ve run into my share of snobs, and their snobbery, thankfully, has pushed me out of my own snobbery. And for that, I’m thankful.

 

I was going to write something about the Doo-Nanny that I went to in Seale, Alabama this weekend, but then I ranted. So that’s what the picture up there is from. And there are others to come.

 

 

*I do not wear a wig. However, I did buy one on clearance at Sister Wig in downtown Columbus once. It was not very convincing.