And realizing that this new best friend is actually your Aunt Opella’s husband’s second cousin’s wife’s sister’s best-friend-from-college’s brother-in-law when they’re over for dinner the day after fate caused your buggies to bump in the produce aisle of the grocery store.
Because if you ever find yourself in Tennessee, just know that “Bless your heart” translates to “You’re a fucking moron” and “I’ll pray for you” really means “Screw off.”
Because why dirty-up a perfectly clean fork when you can just stick your food on a stick?
Shrimp and grits, smoked gouda and grits, catfish and grits, berries and honey grits, pimento cheese and grits, grits and tabasco sauce, sugar and grits, butter and grits, sausage and grits, breakfast and grits, lunch and grits, supper and grits, snack and grits, grits and everything.
In other words, basted and doused in a medley of sauces and flavors like vinegar, pepper, tomato, mustard, Worcestershire, and tinged with ketchup. But the real Tennessean way of eating barbecue is keep it dry, rubbed in spices and herbs before being smoked to perfection. Slam a side of sloppy coleslaw on your plate, and congratulations — you now possess the palate of a Tennessean.
It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 60, if you’re talking to someone 20 years your elder, you say “yes ma’am” or “no sir.” And if you think you won’t be called out in public for responding with “yeah,” you’re sadly mistaken.
Whether or not you know the jogger tripping over her dog’s leash or the old man sitting under a roadside vegetable stand with boiled peanut juice dribbling down his chin, it doesn’t matter. Wave anyway.
In other words, if you turn down a road of Confederate flag-cluttered porches and dip can littered yards, it’s probably in your best interest to retreat back to society.
Add one gallon plastic pitcher of steaming Lipton tea to a cluster of ice cubes, a mound of sugar, and voila — you’ve got the recipe for some syrupy sweet house wine of the South.
Because you never know when you’ll need those 64 cans of corn, green beans, carrots, vegetable soup, beef stew, beef and vegetable stew, chili, tomato soup, peas, asparagus, and potatoes for those catastrophic snow dustings.
Because if you think that same green bill will be falling out of your singing birthday card from Aunt Edith next year if she doesn’t get a thank-you note within a week, think again.
Corn? Vegetable. Cornbread? Vegetable. Mashed potatoes? Vegetable. Mac n’ cheese? Vegetable. Bread? Does it have onion in it? Then it’s a vegetable.
Dinner is the largest meal of the day while supper is the third. Don’t get it twisted when you’re invited for Sunday afternoon dinner to avoid company during a suppertime football game.
C’mon y’all. Is this really still an issue? 