I have a student this week, a seven-year-old girl. And I'm actually going to teach the general curriculum. This week has started out in a way that I would describe as normal, except that it hasn't happened to me before...which goes against the point of "normal."

I started reading Red Clay, Blue Cadillac last night on the train back from Grand Central. I just finished the third story. It's so different from the stuff I normally read, I'm not sure how to "judge" it. For example, one of the stories I read today was first published in Playboy.

Yes, I know. And Kurt Vonnegut is free to get his stuff published wherever he wants. It's not like I've read any of it either. Right. Right. For the articles, I know. I know.

It leaves me wondering though, are Southern women (the subject up for analysis) really that much different from other women? And if so, do I have it? Makes me wanna go around calling people honey. And now that I think about it, I kind of do that already. But not with a pot of decaf in one hand and a face like Naomi Judd. Where'd that image come from anyway? Have I ever actually met anyone who fit that description? My grandmother's name was Cordelia and she made the best buttermilk biscuits in the county, I'd be willing to bet.

On Friday, one of the campers (who I think is 15 or 16) was talking about the way Southerners talked and asked me about the phrase "it's gonna hit the fan," which he so politely edited for my camp-counselor, could-get-him-in-trouble ears. He knew what it meant...but somehow wanted to attribute it to rednecks in a saloon [because we had so many of those in the rural South] getting bored...or something like that. I don't know. It didn't make any sense.

And by the way, his Southern accent sounded like the very stuff headed for the blades.

Labels: books., tennessee., work.

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