Bless Her Heart,

Part of being in any new country is learning the language.  This goes for Tennessee.  Although I do love it here (quite desperately, in fact), I am a stranger in a strange land...I'm here via New York and LA, and although our area is chock-full of transplants, most of them are southerners of some ilk.  

As a New Orleans native, Chip has been most helpful as a translator.  When we moved here, every single one of our neighbors brought desserts or a warm meal within the first two days of our arrival, all with notes welcoming us to the neighborhood, phone numbers, email addresses.  I was touched to my crusty, cynical core...how southern!  how country!  how delightful!  Nooooo, my husband reassured me.  They're just here checking us out, making sure the cops won't be coming to this house.  As soon as I tried emailing around for playdates and happy hour, I realized he was right.  The south is a closed community...they were watching and waiting...making sure our kids weren't brats and the cops weren't coming to our house.  It took a few months, but our kids aren't brats and the cops haven't been to our house (except along with the ambulance for my son), and the neighbors?  They really are wonderful (except crazy milk lady...).

The other code I've had to crack is the "bless her heart" code, which is southern for "you can say ANYTHING about a person if you preface it with 'bless his/her heart' " ... you can pepper it with a "poor darlin' "...  The obnoxious, sanctimonious crowd likes to end it with a "I'm prayin' for..." (eyes rolling)

As a New Yorker, I've never brought a knife to a gun fight.  I say what I mean and I mean what I say.  Always.  It's therefore not surprising that it's been terribly confusing here...the lovely Steel Magnolia mannerisms paired with the back handed insult...take the blood draw for my son's well child check...it took me three days to figure out we'd been insulted:  

The phlebotomist had my son sit in my lap, and proceeds to say, "Oh-Who's-A Big-Boy!  Bless His-Heart, It's-So-Hard-These-Days-With-All-That-Junk-Food, Poor-Darlin' " 

(translation for Yankees:  D*MN, your kid is fat, stop taking him to McDonald's and force feeding him french fries!)

Bless her heart, I could barely understand her, drawling through those snaggled brown teeth of hers!  You'd think they'd have better dental for people who work at a hospital, poor darling!

(Translation for Yankees:  Not fit for print.)

Yah, I do believe I'll get the hang of this.