 |
| For one thing, it is already spring here, and spring lasts for *months* not just two weeks! |
Administrators
Having now spoken to what I can only assume is roughly half of the administrators on campus for various things, I feel I have a firm handle on this one.
My whole life it has been impressed upon me that when you walk up to someone, say, a receptionist or other administrative-type-person from whom you want something, you stand very quietly and hopefully until they acknowledge you. In the Midwest if you get impatient or just anxious that they might not have noticed you and say "Um, excuse me?" very sweetly before they are done doing whatever they are doing you will get a glare-smile and they will be icily polite to you in a way that makes you feel ashamed and also fear that they will "lose" whatever precious paperwork you just handed them.
Here, no one will pay any attention to you if you are just hovering over their desk awkwardly. They will just keep doing whatever they're doing, even if it is blatantly texting on their phone, until you announce yourself. Then they will drop whatever they're doing and turn to you and you (read:me) will brace yourself for their Smile of Death or even worse their one finger and "I'll be with you in a moment" said quickly without looking at you or moving their mouth. But instead, miraculously, they are cheerful and happy to help you! Sometimes they even tell you about the last time they had to get an X-ray or whatever you're trying to get accomplished. They aren't angry at you for speaking at all! They just weren't going to be the ones to end the unbearable awkwardness. I'm starting to wonder if maybe no one down here feels palpable unbearable awkwardness permeating every situation the way Midwesterners do. (That is a Midwest thing, right? Not just me?).
Similarly,
Passive-Aggression
They do not know what passive-aggression is. Or at least, they only play in the minor leagues. At my UU service last week the Reverend was talking about how everyone seems to be enraged but express it politely (he did not even use the term passive-aggressive) and my heart fell for a moment because I thought the South was so much more open than that! Then he gave some examples which were things like "Oh good, I'm so glad you were late, it's not like I had anything else to do." Which is not even a little bit polite and I can't even imagine a real human saying that. A Midwesterner would say "No, don't worry, it's fine." with a strangely fixed smile and murder in their eyes.
How Are You?
THEY REALLY ACTUALLY SEEM TO WANT TO KNOW! I am so used to using no more than two words to express my mood to anyone who asks, even friends. I have the habit of saying "Pretty good" even when at a funeral or in the hospital for a car accident or whatever. Because there is that permeating sense of awkwardness if you try to reply for real (with friends we circle back to it eventually, but the most I usually open with is "Not great" and wait for them to signal that they are interested in hearing more).
Here they describe their illness symptoms, tell you all about the problems they're having with getting their house restored after the flood, tell you about how they've been working at this same store for 41 years and never really had a dream and never want to learn to cook (true story, that happened within a minute of meeting someone). IT'S FANTASTIC! Sometimes I start to get impatient and I frequently respond "Pretty good, how are you?" and then listen to 10 minutes of information but I love it and I want it and I'm going to get better at giving people my full attention and telling them something real because it seems really important.
