by Denise Calaman

Created on: April 22, 2009   Last Updated: September 18, 2009

"Do you have a pin?" Angie, queen of the Southern Belles asked me.

"What kind of pin. A safety pin or a straight pin?" I asked.

"No, no. A pin! You know, that you write with. Like a ballpoint," she answered.

"Oh you mean a pen!" This was one of the first conversations that I had with Angie. She is the wife of my husband's best friend. They visited us from Alabama a few years ago and I must admit the there was a language barrier. It reminded me of how my aunt, a native Mainer must have felt trying to explain to my southern stepmother how foxes were destroying her backyard.

"You should see all the forks in my yaddd," she told my stepmother. I am glad I was sitting at the table in order to translate. I could see by the look on my stepmother's puzzled face that she was envisioning my aunt's finest silver forks littering her backyard. I cleared up the confusion but almost 20 years later there is still a language barrier between the two of them.

I have to admit that some of the differences between the north and the south are pretty dramatic, even when you live just a few miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line. My husband and I tell our sons all the time, once you cross into Maryland, it's an entirely different world. It would stand to reason that because we live so close to the southern part of the United States that we would have adopted some southern traditions or some part of their culture but it's not so. I think living just a few miles outside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania makes a difference too. We are proud of our Yankee victory and we are reminded more so than other northerners, just who we are as we pass the battlefields of victory, the site of Lincoln's address and many other Civil War historical sites on a daily basis. Just a few miles south across the Mason Dixon Line they refer to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression", but won't hesitate to flock to Gettysburg's annual reenactments. They cheer loudly for Dixie, I think in hopes of changing the outcome.

Southerners are obsessed with the Civil War and history in general and like to keep their culture alive. Southerners are more old-fashioned than northerners and have manners. A southerner's life involves his family and his church. To a northerner the southern lifestyle is slow; no one is ever in a hurry to do anything. Isn't this really how it should be? Northerners live a totally different lifestyle. While we consider our religion important to us, sometimes we are too busy to go to church and

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