Accepting "Y'all"

Yankee Doodle source

source

When I was eight, I moved from New York to North Carolina. Prior to our move, I knew little about southern culture, so little that I was surprised when I heard someone say “y’all” because I thought that southern accents were a thing of the past only existent in old westerns and history (clearly not so). When we moved, I felt like an other myself. A girl in my third grade class called me a “Yankee,” and I didn’t know what that was—I just knew we rooted for them.     I also felt like an other because I was the new kid at school. Feeling like an outsider among my peers led me to otherize southerners, mostly in middle school, when cliques ruled. I went to a middle school that seemed to be run by blonde cheerleader clones and jocks, none of which I have ever been. They all had thick southern accents and ribbons in their hair, and it seemed clear that I was not like them. The reason that I would never be like them was because I was from the north, I thought, and I did not go to elementary school with all of them. I thought that middle school in New York must be very different, and only there would I fit in. I was wrong. It was just the school and the age. After 7th grade, I transferred to a school that focused on the arts and had a more eclectic student-body, and I flourished there. I still think southerners are different than northerners in some ways, but there are all kinds of people everywhere, and culture is not confined to location.