I am not from Deliverance. Sure, if you're not from there and you've never been exposed to it's culture, you may not fit in and you may be looked upon as an outsider, but for the most part( I hesitate to say it's always true because there are exceptions to every rule.) no man rapes another man on the river for kicks and giggles. I've had friends, teachers, and employers alike comment on the rural community in the valley at the beginning of Appalachia where I grew up, most comments were ignorant or at best, misinformed. Here are a few of my favorites:
"you mean they let people come off that mountain up there!!??"--The guy from YourPie when he was interviewing me for a job.
I simply replied yes and purposely bombed the interview, because anyone who was amazed that I'd "made it off the mountain" just could never understand the person that I am.
"You're from that area that has all them snake handling churches, huh?" --A psychology professor at Young Harris
I had to explain to him, that in fact, the closest snake handling church I knew of was about a hour away and that I'd never actually seen someone handle a snake inside a church building. I went on to explain that most God fearing good Baptists and Methodists figured that if God made snakes poisonous, he made people smart enough to know better than to hold them. I mean, we do have Adam and Eve as a primary example for what sort of trouble snakes get you in.
"People in Appalachia don't know better than to ride horses and drink alcohol when they are 7 months pregnant." - A sociology professor at UGA
I beg to differ. I have brothers and sisters and cousins who almost all have children and I'm pretty sure they didn't drink or ride horses at 7 months pregnant. Besides, if we're as poor a region as this particular professor would have us believe, then who can afford either horses or alcohol anyways!!?
"Black people in the south are fat because they were slaves."-The same Sociology professor from before
-Actually, black people in the south are fat for the same reasons white people in the south are fat. We love sweet tea, sorghum syrup, fried everything, and anything with sugar, and then we refuse to get off our fat asses and do anything that would work off the fat that builds up. Fat doesn't discriminate.
"Everybody's inbred down there!!"-A friend I met in Yellowstone
People are more likely to be inbred in other, even more rural communities than mine. It's more likely that a family from say, rural Washington state or West Virginia or something would be inbred. Because as anyone from home can tell you, there is no shortage of who's cheating who around there. However, for the most part (again, that whole exception to the rule thing) any inbreeding to go on in Chattooga county, would be purely incidental and accidental. Nobody likes the idea of sleeping with a sister, brother, cousin, niece, nephew...you get the drift.
"I ______ your accent"-Everyone I've met outside of home
I've gotten to the point that I don't even acknowledge this comment for the most part anymore. Every region has a different accent. It just so happens that mine is thicker than most, which can be attributed to the fact that where I'm from is rural and doesn't have much flux as far as who goes in and comes out. Generally, people stay or go. So accents change very little. It's thick and it's slow and I don't apologize for it.
"Well, you sure are proud of it." -Lots of different people
You're right, I am. I'm proud of where I'm from. It's the sort of place where people don't go without the basic necessities. People don't go homeless. Kids don't go homeless. I won't say it doesn't have its share of problems and issues. Kids don't finish high school nearly enough and babies have babies too often, and drugs are everywhere. However, there are more educated people that come home all the time, and one day maybe, I'll be one of them. At the end of the day, it's a place I'm proud to call home. No matter what everyone else thinks of it.
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