My daughter Carol called on the way to school early this morning. She is a teacher. In the course of the converation she asked about my day. I told her I had an appointment at 11 to "get my hair fixed." Cabbie, a Southern girl, did not laugh at my choice of words.Later in the morning, a friend, Ann Short, called and said, "Whatchea doing?" I told Ann I was about to go out the door to "get my hair fixed. Ann did not laugh.
When I ended the second conversation, I laughed! In fact I laughed out loud even though I was home alone. Can we really "fix" our hair? Does it become broken? Of course it does sometimes need "repair."
Earlier this week, we had a family marathon of indignant emails. "How discourteous to the South," we wrote, "for anyone to laugh in our faces at our choice of words in speech? " It all started when one family member wrote, "I had to work hard to quit saying "show out" when I got ribbed mercilessly while living "up North" -
"Have you ever thought," we asked one another, "how interesting it is that people in the South are "ribbed mercilessly" for our language choices ...and it seems to have never occured to anyone from the South to "rib mercilessly" people in other parts of our great United States of America for the many strange phrases they use in their speech."
We had fun emailing back and forth arrogantly telling each other how "arrogant" our Northern brothers and sisters are to laugh at our speech patterns and turning the tables by laughing at their speech with such statements as "I have heard that a New York accent is the best birth control there is."
But..where in the world did we ever get the phrase, "I'm fixing to get my hair fixed"?
7 comments:
I laughed out loud when I read about your friend, Ann Short! That is hilarious!
Well, I'm fixin'ta get up from this computer -- I've been sitting here most of the day! Enjoyed reading about your take on Southern speech.
I think that no other part of the country should poke fun at us southerners for our speech. When I was in college, I rang bells for the Salvation Army in Pennsylvania. I constantly heard people using the phrase, "youse guys"! And Bostonians say "Hahvad" and "Cah"! SO, we should all just celebrate the diversity of our language. Aunt Ruth, are you going to 'carry' yourself to the beauty parlor to get you hair fixed!!!
I agree with Jane Ann.... they have no room to talk. I lived in Pennsylvania for a while and heard 'youse guys' and 'youinns' from everyone and they had the audacity to make fun of me.
I also had a guy tell me that they didn't live in Appalachia (sp?) - he thought Appalachia was only in the South (this was Western PA and it's definately Appalchia). We didn't stay there long.
I was glad that you said at the end of the post that you were 'fixin' to go - I thought you were getting your hair 'fixed'.
Hahaha on Ann Short!
It's good our Northern cousins think we are ignorant and backwards, it's always better to be underestimated. Plus, it keeps them up there.
BTW - some of my best friends are from up North - I married a Northerner.
BTW - what do you do when the little jpeg you are supposed to copy has letters you can't tell if they are t or f or l????
Quite helpful data, lots of thanks for your article.
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