Say What?
I know that I have no excuse. I grew up in Oak Ridge, a small town outside of Knoxville in the Appalachian mountains. I like to claim that the town is why I still don’t speak Tennessee. To my credit, Oak Ridge is the ‘city of scientists’. It’s the town that ‘built the bomb’ (along with its sister city Los Alamos, but that’s something we Oak Ridgers only seem to recognize because we must.) Oak Ridge (along with its sister city Los Alamos) has the distinction of having the highest number of PhDs per capita anywhere in the U.S. One of those is my father. My mother holds a JD and firm grip on atheism. So you can see that I was doomed to geekdom right from the start.
I contend that this is why I don’t speak Tennessee. We spoke a different language in my house growing up. My mother loves to tell the story about the neighbor who was upset that she had no fillings in her front teeth. (This was back in the days before the gold-capped front tooth was cool.) My mother told the neighbor lady that she was happy for her and was shocked when the neighbor demanded ‘why? I mean I can’t fill a thing!’ (If you didn’t get it, read it out loud.)
Other phrases that have given me pause are: Carry me to which means to give a ride. At least when someone says ‘I was wondering if you could carry me to . . .’ you get the gist and when you say ‘sure’ you aren’t surprised that they head for the car. But I don’t care to is a whole different game. I asked an employee if they could help with something, and he replied ‘I don’t care to.’ So I asked the next guy. This insulted the first person who reiterated that he ‘didn’t care to’. So I reiterated that it was fine and I’d find someone else. It almost got ugly. As it turns out ‘I don’t care to’ means ‘sure, that’s fine’. Yeah, clearly not what I thought either - and I grew up around here.
I’ve had discussions about flyers, where I imagined telephone poles and bulletin boards adorned with brightly colored papers. Later I realized that flyers bloom in the spring and grow up from the ground. Jeetyit? is a question asked by the neighbor kids wanting to know if my kids have had their dinner already. And family lore has another neighbor (no not the same one, that would be too easy) who complained that naming a child ‘Ian’ was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. This made no sense until she took it further, huffing that ‘if they’da had twins (twiy-uns) they coulda named’em Ian and Ay-out.’ Yes, Ay-out is spelled o-u-t.
I thought I had moved to the South. Only upon arriving do I realize that I had in fact come to the Say-outh.
In the Say-outh, people are friendlier. I knew more of my neighbors in seven weeks here than I had met it seven years in LA. People say hello at the gas station and the grocery store. And, get this: they wave you in front of them in traffic! This last one is truly unbelievable to me. They actually motion for you to get in front of them. Will I be expected to exhibit such self-sacrifice for a neighbor? I mean, I’m glad to know your name and all, but give up my precious spot in traffic?
Clearly, this is a strange and alien land I traverse. There are customs I must learn. I don’t want to offend the natives. (I really should be a native, shouldn’t I? So why don’t I feel like one?) I tried it - I motioned someone in front of me in traffic yesterday and she gave me a thank-you wave. I am flummoxed. I think I’ll soothe myself by heading out to the back acres and trying to find the little bunny I made my cat, Delilah, set free the other day. Perhaps I can shelter it from the hawk overhead and in exchange maybe the bunny can explain to me why ‘hawk’ has two syllables.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Trading Up - part 2
Duck!
When we moved from LA to Nashville last year, our goal was to trade up. And you’d be hard pressed to argue that we failed. While we made out like bandits on the sale of our house in LA, the bulk of the money went to paying off my daughter’s kidney surgery which our health insurance had deemed ‘experimental’. (Best money I ever spent!) Still, we walked away with a very respectable down payment on the next house.
When we moved in, we were quite pleased that we had gotten our upgrade - more land and a desperate need for more furniture. We were happy. What I didn’t realize was that the land and the house was the very least of the trade-up.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I loved LA when I got there, and I loved it for a long time while I was there. It just didn’t suit where I am now. And there are things about it that I miss dearly even after a year: 1) Poquito Mas. There just aren’t the same quality little Mexican joints in Tennessee. You figure it out. 2) Trader Joe’s. Organic meats and all kinds of good stuff for really great prices. 3) The Coffee Bean. This one makes me cry. Yes, Tennessee has Starbucks. But to me that’s like saying “You miss Spago’s? Try McDonalds!” We are getting a Trader Joe’s in Nashville soon, but alas there is no Coffee Bean on the Horizon.
Still, there are so many things around me that make me pause. Having a barn now, I felt the overwhelming need for barn cats. Their names are Samson and Delilah. (Yes, Sammy has longer hair and no, Delilah isn’t allowed near the scissors.) Once we got barn cats, we started getting the kinds of presents that barn cats bring. You might say this is gross, but as a biologist it’s just way too cool. Once we started getting these presents, I needed a book to ID all of them.
Even better are the live creatures. We lined the cement pit in the back yard, filled it with water and watched as turtles, frogs and waterbugs came to occupy the new sanctuary. We found hundreds of tadpoles swimming there this July. I haven’t seen any frogs in the pond and sincerely hope that this is because they hopped away. I have not notified the kids of the very real possibility that the dog drank them.
Perhaps the roadside signs say it best. In California, there are signs along the freeway that depict a man holding a woman’s hand while they run. The woman holds the hand of a small child whose feet don’t even touch the ground. Basically, they are a visual statement not to hit people dashing across seven lanes of traffic. You may have seen pictures of the signs and thought they were a joke. Rest assured they aren’t. I have been quite pleased that we don’t have these same signs in Nashville. What we have here are warnings not to hit families of ducks dashing across the road. That, my friends, is the trade-up I really came for.
It’s the ducks that -
Wait. I’m sorry, I have to go. I can see out across my back yard that Delilah is bringing home a small rabbit - and it’s still alive. While I am content with the whole circle-of-life thing, I feel the need not to let the cat kill something cute just because it can. Yes, I am a sucker. So I am off to perpetrate some bunny-rescuing and you try not to hit whatever is crossing the street in your part of the country.
When we moved from LA to Nashville last year, our goal was to trade up. And you’d be hard pressed to argue that we failed. While we made out like bandits on the sale of our house in LA, the bulk of the money went to paying off my daughter’s kidney surgery which our health insurance had deemed ‘experimental’. (Best money I ever spent!) Still, we walked away with a very respectable down payment on the next house.
When we moved in, we were quite pleased that we had gotten our upgrade - more land and a desperate need for more furniture. We were happy. What I didn’t realize was that the land and the house was the very least of the trade-up.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I loved LA when I got there, and I loved it for a long time while I was there. It just didn’t suit where I am now. And there are things about it that I miss dearly even after a year: 1) Poquito Mas. There just aren’t the same quality little Mexican joints in Tennessee. You figure it out. 2) Trader Joe’s. Organic meats and all kinds of good stuff for really great prices. 3) The Coffee Bean. This one makes me cry. Yes, Tennessee has Starbucks. But to me that’s like saying “You miss Spago’s? Try McDonalds!” We are getting a Trader Joe’s in Nashville soon, but alas there is no Coffee Bean on the Horizon.
Still, there are so many things around me that make me pause. Having a barn now, I felt the overwhelming need for barn cats. Their names are Samson and Delilah. (Yes, Sammy has longer hair and no, Delilah isn’t allowed near the scissors.) Once we got barn cats, we started getting the kinds of presents that barn cats bring. You might say this is gross, but as a biologist it’s just way too cool. Once we started getting these presents, I needed a book to ID all of them.
Even better are the live creatures. We lined the cement pit in the back yard, filled it with water and watched as turtles, frogs and waterbugs came to occupy the new sanctuary. We found hundreds of tadpoles swimming there this July. I haven’t seen any frogs in the pond and sincerely hope that this is because they hopped away. I have not notified the kids of the very real possibility that the dog drank them.
Perhaps the roadside signs say it best. In California, there are signs along the freeway that depict a man holding a woman’s hand while they run. The woman holds the hand of a small child whose feet don’t even touch the ground. Basically, they are a visual statement not to hit people dashing across seven lanes of traffic. You may have seen pictures of the signs and thought they were a joke. Rest assured they aren’t. I have been quite pleased that we don’t have these same signs in Nashville. What we have here are warnings not to hit families of ducks dashing across the road. That, my friends, is the trade-up I really came for.
It’s the ducks that -
Wait. I’m sorry, I have to go. I can see out across my back yard that Delilah is bringing home a small rabbit - and it’s still alive. While I am content with the whole circle-of-life thing, I feel the need not to let the cat kill something cute just because it can. Yes, I am a sucker. So I am off to perpetrate some bunny-rescuing and you try not to hit whatever is crossing the street in your part of the country.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Trading Up - part 1
Wagons East!
If you could see the U.S. from space, I am convinced there would be a visible line of cars heading from California back east - particularly to Nashville. I can imagine a lot of heads nodding as you read this. Yes, we moved to Nashville from San Diego last month. Our neighbor just came from California. My sister brought her kids out after ten years in Riverside. It’s the reverse of the Wagon trains of the eighteen hundreds.
I’m not the first to get this grand idea that somewhere-in-the-South would be a better place for a family than Los Angeles. I have become equally certain that I’m not the first Angeleno to hop online and start looking at Real Estate. And I know I’m not the only one who was glued to my computer until three a.m., rating homes and finding better deals like it was the latest Mario game I had to beat.
When I finally got a real estate agent on the phone, he threw out a few options that left me sputtering. I didn’t want to live in the crackerbox houses he was offering - because surely no reasonable house had ever been given away for such a pittance. In response to my stammers, the agent backpedaled “I can get you a fixer for twenty thousand less!”
It took me a while to explain to the agent that it was just me. Clearly, I had gone stupid. And I had gone stupid years ago not even knowing it. I had bought our first house in the LA market and had easily acclimated to the idea that you spoke of houses with less that two thousand square feet in terms of half or three-quarters of a million.
By the time we arrived in Tennessee, we had stars in our eyes, much the same way I had when I moved into my first tiny studio in LA ten years ago. Only this time the terminology was different. We were no longer throwing around phrases like Right off Hollywood Boulevard or behind Grohman’s Chinese Theater. Now the words were substantial things like cul de sac and second floor and the most important: acre. Only now, in addition to the stars in our eyes, I am certain we also had the word ‘sucker’ stamped across our foreheads.
In the end our agents were fantastic. They kept us out of unreasonable purchases and got us a great deal in an even better neighborhood. (Thanks Dan and Stan and Jan!) (Yes, those are really their names. Welcome to Tennessee.) In the end, my desire to put our family into a better place for us led us to do something we thought was original and exciting. We left our friends behind (*sigh*) and threw ourselves into the unknown - pioneers off exploring where no man had gone before. Of course, we took this great leap only to find that we were merely the next in a long line of wagons (minivans?) heading the same direction we were.
If you could see the U.S. from space, I am convinced there would be a visible line of cars heading from California back east - particularly to Nashville. I can imagine a lot of heads nodding as you read this. Yes, we moved to Nashville from San Diego last month. Our neighbor just came from California. My sister brought her kids out after ten years in Riverside. It’s the reverse of the Wagon trains of the eighteen hundreds.
I’m not the first to get this grand idea that somewhere-in-the-South would be a better place for a family than Los Angeles. I have become equally certain that I’m not the first Angeleno to hop online and start looking at Real Estate. And I know I’m not the only one who was glued to my computer until three a.m., rating homes and finding better deals like it was the latest Mario game I had to beat.
When I finally got a real estate agent on the phone, he threw out a few options that left me sputtering. I didn’t want to live in the crackerbox houses he was offering - because surely no reasonable house had ever been given away for such a pittance. In response to my stammers, the agent backpedaled “I can get you a fixer for twenty thousand less!”
It took me a while to explain to the agent that it was just me. Clearly, I had gone stupid. And I had gone stupid years ago not even knowing it. I had bought our first house in the LA market and had easily acclimated to the idea that you spoke of houses with less that two thousand square feet in terms of half or three-quarters of a million.
By the time we arrived in Tennessee, we had stars in our eyes, much the same way I had when I moved into my first tiny studio in LA ten years ago. Only this time the terminology was different. We were no longer throwing around phrases like Right off Hollywood Boulevard or behind Grohman’s Chinese Theater. Now the words were substantial things like cul de sac and second floor and the most important: acre. Only now, in addition to the stars in our eyes, I am certain we also had the word ‘sucker’ stamped across our foreheads.
In the end our agents were fantastic. They kept us out of unreasonable purchases and got us a great deal in an even better neighborhood. (Thanks Dan and Stan and Jan!) (Yes, those are really their names. Welcome to Tennessee.) In the end, my desire to put our family into a better place for us led us to do something we thought was original and exciting. We left our friends behind (*sigh*) and threw ourselves into the unknown - pioneers off exploring where no man had gone before. Of course, we took this great leap only to find that we were merely the next in a long line of wagons (minivans?) heading the same direction we were.
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