Last night while watching No Reservations I started to reflect on my "culture" and the interesting ways it seems to be coming up for me in the midst of all this change. Tony is a NJ/NYer... and it shows. It got me thinking about what culture shock may lie ahead.
I was raised in NJ, near enough to NYC to go in regularly and absorb/adopt alot of its culture. Moving down here was a genuine shock to my system. It took me quite some time to realize the behaviors, mannerisms and vocalizations that set me apart from my new Florida friends and made alot of my job hunting much less pleasant than it could have otherwise been. I don't think I was overly crass or obnoxious, at least not by Northeastern standards, but I definitely spoke my mind, had opinions about everything (and NOT in the NYC centric world view, I at least knew enough to leave that at the border) and did not shy away from getting involved or making my views known.
Then I married a quasi-native, deeply ingrained with the "Southern" culture of Old Florida. I learned to be a better judge of when it was appropriate/not threatening to speak my mind, to offer my view. I learned to hang with the wives and when to defer my personal interests in favor of the interests of others. I'm sure I wrote more than one novel in my mind while pretending to watch Nascar.
When I came out to myself alot of that fell away. I was too tightly wound, too raw to be bothered with such things. But of course by then, some 12 years later, the local culture was my own. I fit right in, can speak redneck like a native, and had honed my ability to judge people and situations effectively for my own safety and well being.
Interestingly, both lovers... my first and then Mander... are from NY. Watching Tony last night I thought, I bet one of the things that attracted Mander to me was whatever of NYC I retained during my Southern indoctrination. I thought, as we laughed over how easy it is to imagine being in Tony's place and enjoying things the same way he is, that there must be some cultural heritage involved in that. I mean, Tony's a pop icon because ALOT of people can relate to him, but I got to thinking that maybe we relate in a just-so NYC kind of way.
And then I wondered, who will I BE in NY?? Will I be the odd duck quasi-Southerner to folks who never left? In what ways will I discover I *don't* relate to Northeasterners? Where Mander saw the refreshing NYer in this Floridian here, will the Floridian be painfully present there? I hear the twang I've acquired sometimes now, will it be VERY obvious up there? The colorful phrases of the Old South, which I've added to my pantry and now are as much a part of me as anything from my first 20 years of life... what will they say to the people around me there? What transitions in self-moderation and awareness will I undergo? Will it hurt, as the transition here sometimes did? Or will I feel totally natural, again amongst my people?
Only time will tell but I'll try to maintain a level of self-awareness to observe my reactions to people and theirs to me. It may amount to nothing, it may be interesting, to me anyway, fakey anthropologist/sociologist that I am. At the very least I can see how long my love of the word y'all lasts, y'all.
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