Nothin’ ta See Here

When I was in college, I took a linguistics class where I learned -- to my shock -- that a southern drawl is often viewed as sign of stupidity, not class. I remember my professor being equally as dumbfounded when I told her that southerners see their dialect as signifying a gentility, not backwardness. We agreed to disagree.

I moved to St. Pete when I was 10, meaning that I spent my formative years in South Carolina. I think I carried a lot more of the South with me than my younger siblings. When I get nervous or eager to please, I sometimes switch back to talking like, as I’ve now come to realize, a hick.

The other day, I was driving back from the Bootheel and listening to the book, Nothing to See Here on audio. It was fantastic! Seriously, it was weird and meaningful and funny and deep. The premise was so bizarre, I kept waiting for it to make sense.  It never did, and then I decided that it was a metaphor for something, but I would not allow myself to think of what because I'm experimenting with not thinking too deeply sometimes, just enjoying things as they appear on the surface.

Anyway, a Tennessee senator has two children whom he basically hides from the world because they have an awkward condition: they spontaneously combust sometimes. Just burst into flames. No one can figure out the phenomenon, but they have to keep it under wraps, so Senator Roberts' wife Madison reaches out to her old boarding school roommate.

Lillian’s response: "This is weird, Madison. You want me to raise your husband's fire children." She’s a pothead who isn't really doing anything else with her life, so she eventually agrees to give raising the fire children a whirl.

And so she does. The narrator did a great job with all the southern accents, and you could really picture these fire children bursting into flames when they got good and mad!

The book was a little longer than my car ride, so I ended up finishing it on my way to an interview a day or two later. It ended on a bittersweet note and I was satisfied. I turned my car off and went into the building to meet two principals and the English department chair.

It took me several sentences to realize all my words came out in a drawl. I was mortified. Yet it was impossible -- impossible -- to stop!!! I had forgotten that I can revert back to how I was raised when I get nervous, and the narrator in that damn audiobook triggered me. I talked in a southern drawl throughout the entire interview because I could not, could not seem to get back to normal. Fortunately, I will never see those people again. I think we all realized it was not a good fit.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is because I’m not thinking about it too deeply. But you should totes check out this great book! (Maybe the hardback, though, instead of the audiobook? Unless you enjoy looking like a moron.)