It's simply a matter of culture schlock

I got tickled last week when American Idol's Simon Cowell got his knickers in a knot because a failed contestant told the judges, "Y'all be careful, now."

Apparently Simple Simon thought he was being threatened.

No, Simon, it's just a Southern thing. In fact, "Y'all be careful" is about as far from a threat as it can get -- it's an expression of caring. "Y'all be careful because we don't want anything to happen to you."

Now if he'd said, "You better watch yo' @$$" -- that would have been a threat.

"Be careful" is the last thing I say to my husband when he leaves for work in the morning. It's the last thing I say when I drop my teenagers off at the latest teen hangout. It's the last -- and most frequent -- thing I say when I take my 10-year-old anywhere that involves heights, corners or anything with moveable parts.

The boys tease me about it, telling me I go overboard.

"Mom, you don't have to tell me to be careful all the time," said my oldest.

"Yes, I do," I said. "The one time I forget to tell you to be careful, something horrible will happen. I know it will."

"Mom -- I'm just going to bed."

The whole American idol thing got me thinking about other cultural differences. How can we possibly reconcile with different cultures in different countries when we've got major differences in our own? Honestly, I don't think we're going to achieve world peace until we can convince our own countrymen that any carbonated soft drink is called a Coke; a crick is something you get in your neck, not a body of water running through the back 40; and that both "yes" and "government" are two-syllable words (yayis and gummint).

The South gets a bad rap in the media. We tend to come across as conniving Southern belles with the IQ of grits, or corrupt politicians with the IQ of cheese grits. Deliverance meets the Dukes of Hazard, with a little Scarlett thrown in.

For some reason, the Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners who claim Southern roots -- Cordell Hull, Martin Luther King Jr., Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, just to name a very few -- are treated as though they are the exceptions to the rule. Not true -- we Southerners just tend to be more modest than most. (Snort.)

I'm a first-generation Tennessean and my dad was a hard-core Razorback, My poor mother was the odd one out, growing up around St. Louis. The first time she visited the greatest state in the union, a waitress asked her if she'd like grits with her breakfast.

"Sure," said Mom. "I'll try one."

She never acquired a taste for grits, but she came to love it here. When my Dad died and her sisters tried to coax her back to the land of the Gateway Arch, her answer was no.

I think the thing I hate the most about the world's attitude towards Southerners is the same thing I hate about the world's attitude towards Californians, Mexicans, the Irish, blacks, women ... even Yankees. You just can't pigeonhole people by their background, their race, their sex or their religion. I mean, my Dad was from Arkansas and never had children with anyone remotely related to him. I live close to Nashville and can't stand country music. My oldest son is a tree-hugging, vegetarian neo-hippie and doesn't like listening to NPR.

I'd rather be judged on my actions than my background, which is one reason I've never tried to substantiate the family claim that we're descended from Thomas Jefferson. Sure, it would win me a spot in the DAR on his merits, but I'd rather win a Pulitzer on my own.

I don't mind being proud of my heritage, I just don't want to think that's all there is to me. I also don't mind being Southern -- why on earth would I? I once sat on the limb of a giant magnolia in Oxford, Mississippi, peeking through the windows of William Faulkner's home and seeing where he scrawled the opening chapter of "Absalom! Absalom!" along his kitchen wall. The South has good and bad -- magnolias and moonshine -- but I wouldn't live anywhere else.

So we talk a little slower than most. Maybe that just means we're thinking a little harder.

And when we do talk, we tend to mean what we say.

So y'all be careful, now.

­-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazette. She can be reached by e-mail at mreeves@t-g.com.