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by Bucky Lewis There is a list being circulated on the Internet about how living in New England and being a "Yankee" makes us not a very practical people. Yea right. The following is a partial list You know you're a Yankee if… You eat fried chicken with a knife and fork. You've never seen a live chicken, and the only cows you've seen are on road trips. Whenever someone tells an off-color joke about farm animals, it goes over your head. You've never had grain alcohol. You don't see anything wrong with putting a sweater on a poodle. More than two generations of your family have been kicked out of the same prep school in Connecticut. You don't have at least one can of WD-40 somewhere around the house. The last time you smiled was when you prevented someone from getting on an on-ramp on the highway. You call binoculars opera glasses. You can't spit out the car window without pulling over to the side of the road and stopping. You would never wear pink or an applique sweatshirt. You can't do your laundry without quarters. Obviously the idiot who came up with that list has never been up here during mud season, built a fire in snow, handled a four wheel drive skid on black ice, sat in a tree stand for three hours in twenty degree weather for a deer to happen by, help a friend recover his truck that went through the ice, nor set out to hike up Mt Washington when the temperature is a nice sixty degrees at the bottom with no wind, while meanwhile at the top it's minus 40. It took many years to learn not to talk about things that I don't know. Why is it that every Saturday morning fishing and hunting show on ESPN is hosted by guys from the Deep South. Guys who use the English language worse than a Washington County Lobsterman. Not only do they think we don't have a clue on how to hunt and fish, they make fun of the way WE talk. Give me a break! I wonder if they have any clue how they give new meanings to certain words. For example, the word SEED: "I ain't never SEED a fish do thet 'afore" And they come up with new words too, such as: IGNERT. "Them boys from Nawinglind sho r IGNERT win eht cums 2 huntin' deers" Obviously to them we come from a FARN country…. Certainly they must know that we know that to be the best at hunting and fishing you have to have a southern drawl. Ayuh. I do have to say that, in general, southerners make better racecar drivers than we here in the north. Everyone knows that the reason they have better skill levels at high speed driving is because generations ago, their forefathers perfected these skills by evading the coppers while running moonshine. Big deal. How much skill does it take to go around endlessly in a left-hand circle? Though there is some speculation that some guys up here that I know would have to stop and ask directions! It doesn't matter where we go, we always encounter rich pockets of colloquialism. A melting pot of creative folklore. The reason that we tend to make fun of regional America is human nature. People laugh because they feel secure at that given time, even superior. This is why it is no coincidence that the most popular TV sitcom of all time was one about a bunch of "shitkickers/hillbillies" who came into money and tried to straighten out the anal retentive world of Beverly Hills. Let's face it, there was something disarming about Jethro trying to decide on a vocation between 'brane surhgin or friy kuhk'. And the way that Granny knew more about doctorin' than Dr. Clyburn. It was anarchy at it's finest and funniest. I think this is the essence of why the most popular jokes we laugh at are the ones that are involved with hicks, kids, and ethnic groups. This will never change. Humor is different for everyone. Different buttons push different responses for different folks One thing humor should never do is to manifest prejudice toward our fellow man. Laughter is a healing art. Before we laugh at others, we'd best be prepared to laugh at ourselves first. |