Yankee: someone from a Northern state. The first person to ever call me a Yankee was Bruce McLarty. In fact, he called me a Yankee a total of three times over the course of a single luncheon. As a resident of Ohio, this term applies to me, but I didn\u2019t know it until I came to school here in Arkansas.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, there were a lot of things I didn\u2019t know until I came to school in the South. For example, apparently oversized T-shirts and Chacos, or \u201cchalkies\u201d as my little sister called them when she visited, are considered fashionable. Everyone seems to think that \u201cy\u2019all\u201d is a real word and pop is referred to as Coke, which for the record is a brand of pop. I won\u2019t even address those crazy people who use the word \u201csoda.\u201d They\u2019re just wrong.<\/p>\n
People are always smiling at me here. In Ohio, you don\u2019t look at people you don\u2019t know \u00be that\u2019s considered staring. You especially don\u2019t smile at them \u00be that\u2019s considered creepy. My mother, born and raised a Texan, tells me that people in the North are rude. I disagree. I just think it\u2019s a different culture.<\/p>\n
In the North we don\u2019t say \u201cyes ma\u2019am\u201d and \u201cyes sir,\u201d and it isn\u2019t because we\u2019re being disrespectful. In fact, quite the opposite is true. If I were to say \u201cyes ma\u2019am\u201d to an adult in the North, she would think I was sassing her. In the North we let our \u201cyeah\u201d be yes and our \u201cnah\u201d be no, and things are just fine \u00be no ma\u2019ams or sirs necessary.<\/p>\n
Another good example is holding doors. It isn\u2019t rude to not hold the door for someone in the North. In actuality, sometimes it\u2019s rude to hold the door open. It\u2019s far too cold for that and you\u2019d let all the heat out. In the South you could be 100 feet from the door and someone would still hold it open for you.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite pastimes since coming to school here is what I like to call door racing. This is where I race a boy to see if I can open the door before he can. We\u2019ll both be walking toward a door, and I\u2019ll see him speed up to try and open it for me. So naturally, I speed up to match his pace. He responds by increasing his speed until we\u2019re both speed walking toward the door. \u00a0Whoever gets there first is the winner.<\/p>\n
These cultural differences are often a source of confusion for us Northerners, but I have to admit the South is rather charming. Even though Southerners walk slow, talk with a funny accent and have a rather large obsession with sweet tea, I\u2019ve learned to love the South.<\/p>\n
I love the warm weather and the fact that the mere mention of snow makes everyone run for bottled water and close down school for a week. I love that people are friendly and genuine. I love that men are gentlemen and want to hold the door for me even if they have to race me for it. I don\u2019t even mind adding ma\u2019am and sir to my vocabulary.<\/p>\n
But I will never say y\u2019all, nor will I ever refer to pop as Coke. I\u2019m too much of a Yankee for that. And for all you other Yankees out there, never fear; Bruce told me he \u201cstill takes pictures with Yankees.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yankee: someone from a Northern state. The first person to ever call me a Yankee was Bruce McLarty. In fact, he called me a Yankee a total of three times…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15039,"featured_media":8873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8762,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761\/revisions\/8762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}