Here's your sign

Four signs that you are adapting to life in the south (possibly even a little more than you are comfortable with):

1. You start using really interesting grammatical constructions.
I guess that hearing people say “He done gone to town last week” and “She be doing that right now” has finally caught up with me, because on Friday I brought entire family to a standstill, when I said; “Look at what you done now” when husband-dear threw a ball across the room for Zoe and it hit a lamp. Actually, it may have also been “You be doing what?!", or “You done did what?!”. My actual response caused such a whoop and a holler from my assorted family members, and such embarrassment on my part, that I think my brain blocked out exactly what it was that I said. The point is that in spite of having been a copy editor for years, on insisting on using proper grammar in the briefest of emails, and endlessly correcting students’ papers, southern grammar has apparently even caught up with me.

2. Roadkill doesn’t phase you anymore. At all.
And when I say at all, I mean it. The other day I was out running, and found myself in that wonderful place runners call “the zone”. It’s when you don’t really feel any pain or discomfort, you don’t really have any thoughts going through your head, you’re just in your happy running place. Now a year ago, any kind of roadkill was enough to catapult of out of any zone, and send me flying to the other side of the road. Not anymore. Not only did I not notice the squished squirrel on the side of road, I didn’t even realize I was running over it until my feet hit the asphalt again, and I wondered what the soft furry thing was I had stepped on. And the worst part? When I looked around and realized I had just stepped on a dead furry animal, I merely shrugged and went on my way. Yeah. Wow.

3. You think going to Zaxby’s is a treat.
Allow me to clarify that although it tries to pretend otherwise, Zaxby’s is nothing more than an upscale McDonald’s or Chick-Fil-A. You still have to pick up your very greasy order of chicken and fries at a counter, you still are responsible for throwing your own food away and getting your own refills. The difference is that the ambiance is a little nicer and your food is not served in paper wrappers, but on plastic plates. A year ago I would have preferred anything to Zaxby’s. A bowl of soup at home would have seemed more enjoyable (and just for the record: I am not a soup lover). But this weekend, after having run another idiotic distance, I was so famished for something hot and greasy, that Zaxby’s sounded absolutely wonderful. And I really enjoyed the funky roadsigns they had used for the walls, as well as the chicken fingers and fries. It’s a long ways away from dinners at Michelin-star restaurants, and the scary part is that it felt good.

4. You start putting metallic ribbons on your car.
I know I wrote about those slightly scathingly only a few months ago, yet now I have become one of the crowd too. Just recently I purchased an apple-red ribbon that reads “proud owner of an adopted pet”, which was sold in support of our local animal shelter. The color matches my car, I do very much love my rescue puppy, and wish everyone else would adopt a pet too, and I think supporting your local shelter is a very worthy cause. So have I been taken in by the ribbon-mania? Probably. Do I care? Not really.

Thank goodness the confederate flag draped over someone’s mailbox that I saw yesterday still sent me into a five-minute rant on intolerance, otherwise I would have really considered myself a lost cause.