Feed: A New Yorker in the South - AggScore: 50.1

Pregnant Meanings

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In the South, a compliment is never a compliment.  Okay, sometimes, it's an honest compliment. But often, it's cause for paranoia. 


I am 37 weeks pregnant, and have been showered with compliments lately.  I am proud to say that I have strenuously resisted the temptation to question those good words with my own cynicism. In other words - I decided to take what I could get. 


Most of these kind words came last week when school started, which meant orientations and class visits, and showing up in crowds of parents with my 37 week old watermelon.  Since it was over 105 degrees of misery every day that week, I wore a sundress which did nothing to hide the size of me, and maybe even accentuated it.  Southern ladies were all over me with southern kindness. Oh, you're so cute, they said. Don't you look adorable! Look at you, they said, You are ALL baby! Wow, they said, All Baby. You look great! they said. The compliments were abounding but I admitted to some that I felt humongous. No, way, they said, you're all baby. But, I said, if I need to switch sides in my sleep I have to wake up and heave ho to flip over. 


Baby's all up front, is what it is. Straight out. Far out. Really far. By all accounts, one can't tell I'm pregnant from the back, and then I turn and wham-o! There it is, huge protruding ovality.  Sometimes it's a shock. I have turned to the side and met with people who exclaimed, "Whoa! You're pregnant!"  I am over 40, with 2 girls about to be seven and nine years old, and I've been careful not to stop exercise (until now), and not to gain more weight than I can possibly take off before I die, but still...Cute? How cute is all this bigness, really? ALL baby? I know, if I really think about these compliments, that gaining 30 pounds is not quite ALL baby. 


Never think too hard about a Southern compliment. 


And I didn't. I did not think too hard about it. I took these kind words with gratitude. 


Then my husband went to a kids' birthday party and ran into a friend who is a successful, middle-aged, self-invented Southern straight talker. A huge talker.  She knows everything about this place and the people in it, and she shares. She shares all. 
"How's C?" she said to him.  
"Doing great. She won't slow down, though."
Then, in emphatic hushed tone,"I hear she's biiiggg!" 


Oh well. I was cute and adorable for a week before she took the sugar off.



Compare this to my experience up North this summer:


Days into our trip back to New York, one mother of three young girls asked when I was due. When she heard it was 2 1/2 months away, she asked how many I was having. I laughed. One, I said, Just one. She said that during her third pregnancy, she was also asked if she was having twins, based on her size.  


On one trip to Target the female cashier said, "Oh, boy. I bet you're ready. Any day now?"
"Nope," I said. "Not quite."
"When are you due?"
"Mid-September."
"Oh." Look of pity.




Southern men say absolutely nothing. Men here are afraid.  No matter how obvious it is, out of fear of being wrong, the Southern male keeps his eyes diverted from the belly and pretends it does not exist.  Making the mistake of assuming a woman is pregnant when in reality she is belly-heavy, seems to be a common experience, common enough that I heard relief from a majority of Southern men when I mentioned the upcoming baby. One after the other confessed. The last mistaken pregnancy with a woman who had a bloated belly. The glare that was so hard it left a scar for all eternity.  


I never heard such a confession from a Northern man. I wonder if that's because the Northern guy is less likely to be mortified by a mistake he probably feels is the woman's fault  - I can see him shrug sheepishly, say: Hey, serves her right for having such a pregnant-looking belly. 


In reality I preferred all those sweet lies. How nice it was before straight-talking Southern woman blew it all up.  In my heart I knew I was big. But I would have been very happy as an ignorant. Now I know that they were talking about me and saying I'm Biiiggg...and I will go back to thinking of those ladies as two-faced Southern bitches. 


I'm kidding, y'all! 


Kind of. 

To See or not to See

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North-South Jokes

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Two jokes, sent from a Mobile, Alabama gal living in Brooklyn:

Where are you from?

Southern girl and Northern girl sit next to each other on an airplane.
SG: Where are you from?
NG: I'm from a place where we know better than to end a sentence with a preposition.
Southern girl sits quietly for a moment, finally turns back to Northern girl and asks: "Where are you from, Bitch?"


Bless your heart

A Southern girl is sitting on her front porch. Her new rich friend from the north comes over and sits down next to her, and says, "Daddy says I can have a new car."
Southern girl says, "Bless your heart.”
Northern girl says, "Daddy says I'm the prettiest girl in the county." Southern girl says, "Bless your heart."
Northern girl says, "Daddy says we have more money than all the other people in the state combined."
Southern girl says, "Bless your heart."
After a while, Northern girl asks Southern girl, "What does your daddy say?"
Southern girl says, "My daddy says, when someone says something you don't like, and you want to tell them to go fuck themselves, you should just say, "Bless your heart.”

If you have any North-South jokes, please send!

Master Gardener or Master of Death

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When I imagined my escape from New York, I envisioned the garden I was going to grow. A gigantic space of growing-ness. Candide Gone Wild; my own garden harvested in a mega way. Many rows of vegetables, dense patches of bright, dazzling flowers, and lavender. Lavender everywhere I looked. (Should have just gone to Provence.)

I ignored the few minor obstacles:
1. I’ve never planted a seed in my life.
2. Thus far, all indoor plants die a miserable death in my care.
3. We bought a house on 6 acres of slopey shade.

With these obstacles in mind, I still had to tend to the desire. So I joined a Master Gardening Class. It promises to give me "pro" status without professional ownership of the name – in other words, I cannot profit from it. Also, I have to do quite a bit of volunteer work teaching others what I learn. So far, the class has been horribly over my head but I am undaunted and keeping up….

Now, instead of being a frustrated wannabe gardener, I am on my way to being the frustrated gardener. The one with no sun, and no land to plant. Now I know how to cut branches off a tree without stressing it out, and I know what a terminal bud is (I like to call it the Alpha Bud), but mostly, I’ve been amazed at the miracle in the life of plants, and perhaps more amazed at my ignorance of it. More on that later.

Stage 2 of “What to Expect When Moving South” will have to wait for now. In the meantime, I’ll be posting a series of short blurbs and vignettes of Southern living. TBC

Amen

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Day 1 in the South, and we need to find a pediatrician.
Our youngest daughter was sick when we left Brooklyn. She had an infection that was treated in New York but had to be followed-up as soon we arrived here.
The search for a doctor turns out to be a mind-boggler.
All the doctors recommended to us say they’re not accepting new patients.
Unless—
(We piece together pieces of conversations from neighbors, family, strangers, secretaries, and our real estate agent, to understand the process...)
Unless — you know a doctor who knows that doctor.
Or—if you know one of the doctor’s patients –a friend, perhaps-or a well-regarded patient who has a little sway.
Then the patient-with-sway calls the doctor.
Then the doctor’s office puts your name on a list.
Then you call and say ‘I’m on the list.’
Then you make an appointment for a date no sooner than 3 months away.
None of this works if you’re in a rush.

New Yorkers don’t take to this screening process gracefully. My husband wants to call and threaten them – discrimination, or something. Anything.
Is it because we’re from New York? I ask, the first of many times I would ask that. Can they tell we’re from New York? Being Northern remains our go-to explanation for other people’s inexplicable behavior, or anything we don’t like.  I ask myself:  Did I mention on the phone that we moved from New York?

We finally find a pediatrician in a neighboring county who takes new patients and will see them right away (later we would refer to her as Dr. Sleeping – she spoke painfully slow and her eyes looked so heavy that we thought she might fall asleep mid-diagnosis).
In the office waiting room, children’s books are strewn all over, which is not new to us, except that these are Biblical storybooks. That is new to us.
My husband shows me the paperwork he’s filling out. He points to something in the patient questionnaire. I peer at it.
It says: In the event that medical care is no longer effective in treating your child, may we pray with you and your child?
We stare at the form.
This is foreign territory.
We are in the South for one day and already firmly on alien ground.
The thought of my children surrounded by praying medical people didn’t sit right with me.

The unspoken rule in New York is to keep your religion to yourself.  It’s a private issue. Religions are too varied and too numerous in the city, and people are too prickly; agnostics and atheists and mixed-faith families like ours add to the problem. Schools would be overwrought with holidays if they gave fair play to each faith, and then that’s not fair to the faith-less. So out of respect for believers and non-believers alike, the schools, and just about everything else, keep God out of it.
This suited us just fine, being from two religions in both of our families, my husband and I still hadn’t decided what to do with our kids and their religious upbringing. It felt invasive to be asked such a question on a simple medical form.
Didn’t anyone think about how people of other faiths would feel upon seeing nothing but Christian books? Are there so few differing religions here that no one considers this? The truth is that a place with little religious diversity rarely has to consider the feelings of other religions.


I think for a moment about the difference between HERE and THERE.
THERE: just a few years before we moved, the city was engaged in a public argument with Mayor Giuliani about whether a painting of the Last Supper splattered with elephant crap was too indecent/offensive/heretical to be displayed in Brooklyn’s Art Museum. Giuliani said, Too indecent.  Most of NYC said, Art is Art, my man. Free Speech, and all that.
HERE:  I think there’s little chance of that painting ever being seen here. No argument necessary.



What a Nose Knows

Before we even found a house to buy, we were confronted with the issue of religion.
We had to search for a pre-school. We were moving mid-year and had to find a school as soon as possible. Our real estate agent, who has become our Woman for All Things, gave us a list of schools to visit in between searching for houses.
Almost all the schools were in churches.
First, we tried the one secular school on the list. It was a daycare and a school, and caretakers looked bored to paralysis, and kids were crying everywhere; it was chaos. It smelled awful. We practically ran out of that one.  Then we went to the most popular preschool in town.  It was in a huge church, nearly the size of a New York block. We called and asked to come and have a tour.
The woman in charge was busy and flustered. She looked us over; our application was on her clipboard.
She took a breath and put her clipboard under her arm.
“First of all,” she said, “you know this a Christian school.”
Was that a question? we wondered.
She squinted at us, waiting for a response.
My husband and I looked at each other.
Did she think we mistook the church for a Synagogue? Maybe we had overlooked the walls – covered in Jesus Smiles on Children and God Loves You posters?
She assumed we were Jewish.  I looked at my husband, who has a Roman nose.  A beautiful, strong nose and dark brown hair.  I am fair-haired and fair-skinned but I was wearing a black sweater coat. "Must be the coat," I later told my husband in the car, "Did I look too urban?"
No, he said.
“It’s you, then. You look Jewish.”
“I guess so,” he said. We knew it couldn’t be me who looked Jewish. My parents took me to see my father’s Jewish parents in a Jewish old age home and the old folks whispered to each other – who’s got the goyim in the family?
The woman in charge gave us a very brief tour, and then let us know about the Enormous Waiting List.
A year later, I would meet a woman who belonged to that church. She told me there was no waiting list to contend with, and was not aware that there was one.


Our next visit was to a school in a different church.  A white bucolic building with a stunning steeple, perched atop a great green hill.   I considered joining that church for the image alone.  Surely an idyllic  place like this cures a soul, converts you, makes you speak jibberish, all that - and happily.
The secretary gave us a tour.  She was a short older lady with the same nose as my husband. She described the school’s program, and promised that it was strictly secular before we even asked.
Out at the playground she assured us yet again that it was not a religious school.  Now what? I was thinking. Maybe I should’ve dumped the black coat.
“You’re MOT, right?” she said to my husband.
He smiled at her awkwardly, Huh?
She dropped it.
I asked him in the car, "What the heck is MOT?"
He didn’t know either.
We speculated:
Members of the Old Testament?
Members of the Taliban?
Members of the Torah?
Metropolitan Out of Towners?
Missing One Toe?
Later we were told it meant “Members of the Tribe.” The Jewish tribe.
I guess New York + Roman nose = MOT
Nothing in each of our lives could have prepared us for these experiences. The irony is that my husband is from the South and his father is a retired minister. But never mind that.

So far, we have not been asked what church we go to, though we keep hearing that many do come out and ask these things.  One woman I was told about, or shall I say, warned about, will come out and ask if you are a Christian.  To me, one might as well ask: How much money do you have?
You just don’t ask those things.

We eventually chose a small church school.  Our nephew went there and we knew that would make our kids more at ease.  It was a sweet nurturing place that unsettled us with their Jesus Loves Me coloring pages, but our kids were happy.  We had a few bumps, but our kids were there only a few months and then were off to secular private school.


Johnny Appleseed

Halfway into their first year at secular private school, our children suddenly mentioned that they had assembly once a week. At assembly, the director talks about God, they said. Then it came out that the kids say Grace every day before snack. On a child’s birthday, they get to choose their favorite grace.
“You pick a Grace?” I asked, incredulous. My kids don’t know any.  How would that make them feel? Turns out they learn them fast and they love it.
"Uh-huh."
“Like what?” I asked my kids. I, myself, don’t know any.
“God our Father, God our Father,” they sang out. “….Ahhhhmenn.”
“Mommy, let me teach you. Let me teach you, mommy,” the little one said, all excited.
“Put your hands like this….” She put her sweet little hands together in prayer, right in the middle of her chest. I couldn’t help but think it was like Yoga. Namaste.
“Do it, Mama.”
She wouldn’t sing until I did prayer pose.
“It’s called Johnny Appleseed.”
My older one rushed over to join in.
“Oh, the lord’s been good to me.
And so I thank the lord
for giving me
the things I need.
The sun and the rain
and the appleseeds.
The lord’s been good to me.
Amen”

My older daughter’s favorite book is her First Book of Prayer’s even though she has not had a bit of religious education. She is drawn to the idea of God and we have come to appreciate the fact that in our absence of a decision about religion at least she is being given something to think about. But if this were New York, people would go apoplectic.

I went to the director and asked him about it. To us, religion was a personal decision having nothing to do with school. He said it had nothing to do with a specific religion – it was just God he talked about in Assembly.
I smiled. Just God.
Only in a place that is not accustomed to different faiths can one think that God is “secular.”
Then the director suggested that since we were undecided, we might want to try his church.

Paul Broun, Farts and Deer Hunting

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I’m reminded how far I am from home when...

...a southern Congressman, Paul Broun of Georgia, likens Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, Marx, and Soviet Russia -- and is not front page news, not displayed in grand tabloid style as an embarrassment of the state who just cooked his career. Imagine what the Daily News or NY Post would do if this was a New York Congressman.

This is what Representative Broun says: "It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force. I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may - may not, I hope not - but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany, and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist.”

There’s more: "We can't be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."

We can't be lulled. Has this historic election suggested a lulling?

I took note of an ad that was placed next to that online article. It was for a local plastic surgeon. It read: “Smooth Out the Past!” After reading the article about Broun, it’s clear that we can smooth the past off our faces, but we can’t keep it off our future.

Imagine the fanatical characters Dr. Broun will incite further. He has given the unintelligent, delusional, paranoid a leader with his cow patty logic. Yes, this is the same man who stood on the floor of the House and compared the Bailout Plan to “cow patties.”

“This is a huge cow patty with a piece of marshmallow stuck in the middle of it, and I am not going to eat that cow patty,” the Republican promised on the House floor, before he voted to defeat the bailout.

First, I wonder if there are any New Yorkers out there who have ever heard of a Cow Patty. I had to ask my Southern husband if it meant what I thought it meant. I guessed that he wouldn’t be calling the Bailout a hamburger. “Is he really referencing poop at the House of Representatives?”

What strikes me again and again with Broun is that he says these things openly and comfortably. These are not outbursts he apologizes for. He is speaking his mind without fear of his constituent’s disapproval; so, it is the audience he is talking to that I am most afraid of, because they are not outraged by him.

Conan O’Brien’s take: “In a related story, don’t have dinner at Congressman Paul Broun’s house.”


I’m reminded how far I am from home when...


in phone call between a Southern man and myself:

“Carol, can I ask a question about parenting?” He is the father of one of my daughter’s friend.
“Of course,” I say. His wife is away for the weekend, and I think he needs assistance with his kids.
He says, “My daughter just said, Daddy, I farted."
I'm waiting for a punch line now.
"I said to her, ‘Oh, no, no, we don’t say that. We do not use words like that. Where did you hear that?’”
Silence.
“And she told me it was your daughter.”
“Uh…”
“I just thought you would want to know that,” he says.
“Uh…”
Now this is not just any Southern man – this is the father of my daughter’s good friend. A man we love inexplicably, especially when one considers the absolute radical differences of our backgrounds. But sometimes, as now, he embodies my need for a blog about living in the South and being from the North.
“Well, I have to tell you, that’s not really a bad word in our house. We tend to encourage more delicate words like ‘Toot,’ and they are told not to use those words in school, but….”
“Call me crazy, but I just don’t think that word is appropriate. Especially not at this age.”
“I’m not calling you crazy, but this is the first time I’ve heard this,” I say.
Again, silence.
I ask, “What is it, exactly? Is it not lady-like enough?”
“No, it’s just not a word I want my child saying.”
Well, fair enough.
Remembering that he began this conversation asking me about a parental question, I told him I would tell her that in your house it’s not ok, but in others, it might be.

He had already told her that. It turned out that he was not really asking me anything. He wanted to inform me, in his own roundabout gentility, that my daughter was using a bad word.

I know we’d rather not have our kids burst out, “Someone farted!” next to the old lady in the quiet bookstore, for example, but do we tell our kids that the word fart is forbidden? Frankly I think it’s an ugly word. I don’t like it or think it’s funny. But kids do, and if I made it taboo, I know they would suddenly worship the word.

One thing is certain – no one in New York would inform me that my child said Fart.


I’m reminded how far I am from home when...

A jarheaded young man drives his Biggie-sized Bronco down our driveway and knocks on the door. He asks if we’d permit him to shoot deer on our property. On the six acres of precious wooded land that we traded in a house in New York City for, where the deer make frequent appearances and our daughters squeal with delight. Where my husband, with his eagle-eye, is always yelling, Deer! and they dash to the windows.

My husband, the never-ending question-asker asks “What do you hunt with, rifle or hunting bow?” Oh my god, why does that even matter?
He uses a compound-hunting bow.
Huge razor-tip arrows (that’s super high speed, my husband says).
“Isn’t that illegal?” I ask him, hoping really hard.
“Not when you use a bow and arrow,” he answers.
“What’s the damn difference?”

Our answer is no. We have young girls, my husband explains. They really like deer.

Two young girls who would likely go horror movie on us, even if it was Troy from High School Musical shooting his super duper razor-tip arrows, shirtless and singing while he did it. Anyway, we are still getting over last year’s youth-warping deer incident.

Last year’s youth-warping incident:

It’s December, just before Christmas, we are eating in a famous drive-thru restaurant that is unfortunately all windows. A pick-up truck loaded with a freshly killed deer in its’ “bed” pulls into the parking lot.
The little boy who sees it first, yells out, “Oh my God! Someone killed one of Santa’s reindeer!”

Our girls look at us, frozen, eyes popped. “WHAT?!” They run to the window to see, like everyone else in the place.

“No, no. NO,” we try to explain. Not Prancer, or Dancer, or Vixen and definitely not Rudolph. Not even a reindeer. Just a plain old deer, we say. “Okay?”
So not okay. Thank god the food arrives. Tip for anyone in that situation: distract with non-meat food and don’t sing carols.


I’m reminded how far I am from home when...

My daughter asks: “Mama, why does [Mrs. First Grade Teacher] say “Dubya” instead of “Double U”?

North vs. South; a not-so-civil war.

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When back in New York, if we mention that we moved South, we generally get three responses: firm and immediate dismissal as Wussies and/or Losers; cautious interrogation about what it’s like to escape from New York; or apathetic pleasantry.

Oh, that’s nice. How’s that goin’? But they don’t care, and we know they don’t care and we shrug. It’s ok, we say. These are the hard core New Yorkers who know No Way in Hell are they ever living anywhere else, and many of them can’t physically exist outside city limits. They’d simply turn to dust.

Loads of worn-out New Yorkers are terrified to leave, even if city High Life has turned into high misery. Why not be terrified? It could turn out to be a profound mistake, and then you’re, as they say in NYC, F---ed. Once you sell your home in NY, chances are, unless your salary jumps ten fold, you will not be able to return. My friend reminded me of that factoid over and over when we made the decision to sell our house in Brooklyn. “You will never able to afford to buy a house in that neighborhood again,” she said. She wasn’t wrong. My house had already tripled in value. It was out of our price range when we purchased it five years ago, now it was out of the park, as we say.

It’s clear that most Southerners can’t understand why a New Yorker would come here. It’s not that clear to us, yet, either.
We’re still not sure our move was not a colossal error, but we have a dialogue that we run through of justifications and reminders when things get rough.

What to remember when wondering why we moved South:
1. Husband can now work at home doing job he loves instead of working on Wall St, which means he is no longer the Ghost of Husband Present breezing thru for brief visitations and leaving only cold air behind.
2. Our kids now call “Mom!” or “Dad!” interchangeably.
3. Do not need to drive anywhere to see the leaves change. We look out our window instead.
4. A playroom. Sound proof room. Downstairs.
5. Prolonging our children’s’ Innocence (at least a little longer). Having lived in suburbia and city, I know how much faster I grew up in the city. But that was not necessarily a bad thing. (more on that later).
6. An island of Granite. A kitchen big enough to have an island, where I am sometimes blithely deserted, and sometimes visited by chirping kids and relaxed husband, all the while - I cook happily. Remember that kitchen I could only swivel in, and quickly became overtaken and buried if the meal required more than two ingredients, and more than one pot.
7. No more pushing a heavy double stroller, covered with weird plastic shield that made me feel like I was enclosing my children in a plastic freezer bag, uphill in Brooklyn with horizontal freezing rain slapping my face – after 2 hour-struggle with 2 toddlers to bundle in myriad layers and after losing final cosmic battle to keep the friggin’ hats and mittens on.
8. Parking tickets in our little Downtown: dollarsignr3. Parking tickets in NYC: dollarsignr110.
Nutshell, right there.


This is the script that plays out each time I meet a Southerner.
It rarely varies.

[A harmless cursory conversation between two people who don’t know each other very well- I mention that I just moved here, to the South. ]

“Oh? Where did you move from?”
“New York,” I say.
Pause. “City?”
“Yes.”
look of surprise and bewilderment “Wow.” Pause. “That’s a big change.” You have no freakin’ idea.
“Yes, it is,” I say.
I smile.
We’re both smiling now.
“What brings you to [this city]?”
I say, “We have family here.”
I tell them a bit. It’s my husband’s family. He’s from [this State]. He went to college here, and his siblings are here. His parents are an hour away.

His family always jokingly suggested we move here, but thought we would never in a million years do it. The joy and novelty lasted less than a week. After that, they had no idea what to do with us. Nor does anyone else here, for that matter.

Just as I have met people who know they would turn to ash if they left “The City,” as we all call it, the ultimate city, of course -- there are many here who know they could not live outside the South, nor this State, and that makes them all (the northerner and southerners) a bit stuck as far as I’m concerned. We may struggle here, but we know we are all the wiser for living here, out of our comfort existence.

It is so easy to be stuck here, though.

This is in many ways the Easy Life.

I am still trying to figure out why exactly that is so. I have time to write, and exercise, and be with my kids, and have quality time with my husband. Why I can manage the Easy Life here, and not back in NY, is still a mystery.



Yes, Sir.

Recently my daughter and I visited one of her classmates who had recently been hospitalized. We went there to bring a small Get-Well gift. There was a man there, watching the football game with this family, who looked up from the game and became on guard in the presence of a stranger. This one ain’t from here.

The mother of my daughter’s friend, seeing the look, said, “This is Carol. They just moved here from New York.”
I guess that explained that.
I looked down at my jeans and green linen tunic and thought, What the hell is the giveaway here? Could it have been my hair, unkemptly falling out of the ponytail? What?
“I love NY,” he offered. This is a kind way a southerner lets you know what kind of person they are not – not the ones who think all New Yorkers are fast-talking anti-God, baby-killers, or walking talking liberal communicable disease. (One man in a group conversation with me was told that we moved from NY and his eyes went cagey and he fled.)
I’m always surprised to hear someone hear say they love NY, but it’s not as rare as it often seems.
“We went there this summer for the game,” he said. “You know in the Yankee Stadium before it closes. You grew up there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“In the city?” he said.
“Yes, I did,” I said.
“Wow, that must’ve been wild. I mean we love it. We love NY but I can’t imagine growing up there.”
I was about to tell him how ultimately cool it is to grow up there, and then I thought better of it. Like how I used to roller skate around the Metropolitan Museum of Art at night. Like how I got picked up by a limousine one day to take me to lunch because a rich kid had a crush on me (actually it turned out he was only pretending to be rich, but that’s a story for later).

Then the usual script, the usual questions -- why here? Why did you move?

It turned out that our children go the same school. I asked his daughter if she liked her teacher this year.
She said: “Yes.”
He poked her, said, sternly: “Yes, Ma’am.”
She dropped her head and corrected herself quietly. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“You probably don’t get much of that in New York, do you?” he said, smiling.
I said, “No, we don’t.” Then I told him that most children I knew called adults by their first name.
Smile gone.
I could see visions of the world’s collapse in his face.

This is one of the reasons I wanted to begin a blog. These differences in custom that separate us, but make us question what is best, what is right. My husband, who is Southern, does not like “Sir” or “Ma’am,” and I am unsettled by it, but not necessarily against it.

My youngest daughter thought the teacher was telling her to say “Yes, Man,” and argued feverishly that Mrs. Preschool Teacher did not say Ma’am. Of course, the word Ma’am was simply not in her vocabulary, so I understand she preferred to hear a word she knew. “But your teacher is not a Man, sweetheart,” I would say, over and over to no avail.

My husband feels that it is a rote empty gesture. We weigh the issue regularly: do children respect adults more by addressing them by Mr. and Mrs. and by using Sir and Ma’am? I have to admit that I felt awkward when the kids here called me Mrs. K, and now, almost two years later, I am very comfortable with it.

On the other hand, Liberal New Yorker that I am, I think children can be taught to be respectful of adults without calling us Mr. or Mrs. or Sir or Ma’am. Maybe my husband is right – it’s the essence that has to be taught, not just the act.