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How to Piss Off Someone From Georgia

Georgia Student Work
by Shannon Dell Mar 24, 2015

Give us shit for how we handle snow.

I once had a guy from Wisconsin pester me about where he could find some slopes to go skiing. Since living in Georgia, we’re more likely to experience higher levels of pollen a year than of snow, I encouraged him to go to Stone Mountain and tube down the slopes layered by synthetic powder. Turns out, he was actually just asking for cocaine.

Due to our lack of experience, we’re not very snow-savvy. At the slightest mention of impending flurries, schools shut down for a week at a time and grocery stores start looking more like a post apocalyptic wasteland. So when a whole city resembles a scene from the Walking Dead as a result of a couple of inches of snow, we’re fully aware of how ridiculous we appear to everyone watching our cars slide into each other on The Daily Show. But what people need to understand is that the South never really gets true snow. It’s the ice that paralyzes our cities, especially Atlanta. Once the tractor trailers start jack-knifing on I-285 it’s GAME OVER.

Offer even the slightest hint that Brunswick Stew may have come from anywhere but Georgia.

Ah, Brunswick Stew — a concoction of butter beans, corn, okra, barbecue sauce, and tender pork or chicken marinated in a sloppy mess of tomato broth, usually whipped up by elderly church ladies who have never left the state of Jawjuh. Soak some cornbread in the stew and wash it down with sweet tea, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide Georgia meal.

That’s right — a Georgia meal. From Brunswick, Georgia. Not Brunswick county, Virginia and especially not Braunschweig, Germany.

Go the speed limit.

In the Southern region of the United States, we amble instead of run, dawdle instead of rush, stroll instead of hurry. And just like any state below the Mason-Dixon Line, Georgia is no exception…except when it comes to driving. While we mind our diphthongs here, if you drive as slow as you speak, expect to be shoved off the highway or at least issued a ticket, which, considering the recent law passed in Georgia to keep the slowpokes out of the fast lane (fittingly called the “Slowpoke Law”), that’s likely to happen.

Merge onto I-16 and endure the straight, stretching asphalt where the only entertainment for 165 miles is a Dairy Queen and a half-assed petting zoo connected to a gas station. Now, try to tell us you didn’t have a lead foot with the windows down and a cup of cajun boiled peanuts from the Wiregrass Chevron and Petting Zoo tucked under your arm.

Bitch about your own state’s humidity.

Not saying that we enjoy the humidity; we’ve just learned to power through it, searching for parking spots with the most shade over spots closest to the building and keeping our box fans buzzing with our A/C on blast.

So when we see social media postings about how humid it is up north, we’d all like to invite you to wade through a summer’s day like a thick swamp, swatting the swarm of gnats away from your glistened face and pumped up hair. Then by all means, tell us how humid it is back home.

Shit-talk the Atlanta Braves.

When going to see a Braves game, you pay $20 to park, $10 to get in, and $9 on a Jack and Coke. By the sixth inning, four people have already been proposed to on the Kiss Cam, and everyone is chanting the questionably racist tomahawk chop like they’re the best team in the whole damn nation. While this may be far from the truth, they’re our team and we’re fiercely loyal to them. So if you could just not bring up the fact that they haven’t won a World Series since 1995, that’d be great.

Make plans on Game Day.

Chances are if your wedding or any sort of celebration takes place on Game Day, no one is going to show up. Whether or not you’re a football fan doesn’t matter. Nobody is going to change their Game Day plans for you, even if it’s for your funeral.

Say “yeah” instead of “yes ma’am” and “no sir.”

Don’t be surprised if you still get corrected in your 20s when saying “yeah” to someone 15-plus years your senior. And in return, don’t take offense to a kid calling you “ma’am” or “sir” either. It’s not an insinuation that the person thinks you need a thicker layer of wrinkle cream or some “weird” way of showing unnecessary respect. It’s just polite. Get over it.

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