Hello, Friend! Goodbye, February!
My friend, Denise, sent me a funny video the other day. I think I’ve watched it ten times already. Dang it, now I want to watch it again. Be right back . . . . You can watch it here.
OK, I’m back. The video is Fred Armisen pointing at a map of North America and talking in various accents. He starts in Maine and works his way down the east coast, back up through the Midwest, and so on. Having either heard people from these places or lived in a few others, I think he’s got some of these accents spot on.
It made me think about how BIG our country is and how there are so many different accents and dialects. It reminded me of a time when I was a little kid playing at my neighbor’s house. Now, when I say “neighbor,” I don’t mean you could see their house from ours. All you could see from our house were trees, but they lived down the road and up a hill, still—a neighbor. A bunch of us were all playing outside, and then Mrs. Hudson opened her front door and shouted something containing a phrase I’d never heard before. See if you catch it:
“Time for everyone to go home! It’s prit near lunchtime.”
Prit near? As my playmates groaned that our fun was being broken up, I remained rooted where I stood, marveling at the new words still hanging in the air. Prit near.
When I came to my senses, I hopped on my bike (banana seat, butterfly handlebars, flowers on the basket) and sped home to ask my mother about the meaning of prit near.
Pretty near. Duh.
I think in some parts of the country, one would say “pert near,” but apparently, where I come from, we prefer “prit” over “pert.”
Once very early in our marriage, I needed to call the National Association for Music Therapy office in Washington, DC, for some paperwork. This was long before the days of being able to “register online.” When I spoke to the person on the other end of the line, he asked if I was calling from Minnesota or Wisconsin. Thinking he was psychic, I asked, “How did you know?” “Your accent.”
I did not have an accent. Noh wayy!!
And then we moved to Georgia! God save the queen, did I learn some new words there! I recall riding on an elevator once, and an elderly woman asked me to “mash” a button for her. Mash a button? At that point in my life, all I’d ever mashed was potatoes. I did not realize elevator buttons were to be mashed.
Our neighbors in the small town where we lived (Kennesaw) were all from the South. I learned so many new words and phrases from them. One of them had a young daughter. The first time I heard her parent say, “Put it up,” I wondered, Why does she have to put it UP? Does that toy belong on a high shelf? Thus, it needs to go in a northerly direction? What I always knew as “put it away” was “put it up” in the South.
Another time I was in the checkout line at a local store, and the man in front of me told the cashier, as she tried to bag up his purchase, “I don’t need a poke.” I swear the checkout girl didn’t lay a hand on him! There was no poking going on! I later realized a poke was another name for a bag.
Some of my best friends are New Yorkers. Where do I start with them? There is always the great “food shopping” or “grocery shopping” debate. We go grocery shopping in Wisconsin. That friend of mine who sent me the video that started all this? Denise? She’s from Long Island. She goes food shopping. And I like how New Yorkers say “from” instead of “about.” Like, “What do I know from _____________?”
So why do I bring all this up? Where’s the encouragement in all of this?
I think it’s here: We live in a vast country with many ways to say things that mean the same thing. There are so many things that make us different from one another. But I think there’s even more that makes us similar.
Don’t we all want the same types of things? We all want to enjoy good health. We want to live happy, purposeful lives. We want our kids to grow up safely, have enough food to eat, have friends, and live happy, purposeful lives like us. Whether you say y’all, you guys, or youse, we all have similar hopes in our hearts.
I remember in the days that immediately followed the attacks on our country on 9/11, there was a feeling of solidarity among Americans. People were kinder to one another. More grace was given to each other, even amongst fellow drivers on the roadways! Out of tragedy, I think we felt more “bonded together.” I don’t want more tragedies, but, oh, how I’d love to feel more of that bonding again.
So, let’s enjoy our differences but remember, as Maya Angelou said at the end of her poem entitled “Human Family”—
“I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.”
It’s prit near time for another cup of coffee, my friend! Have a great week!
Written with love – – – Patti XOXO
“No man is an island, No man stands alone,
Each man’s joy is joy to me, Each man’s grief is my own.
We need one another, So I will defend,
Each man as my brother,
Each man as my friend.”
(Baez/Schickele – based on a poem by John Donne)