Am i still in the South?...

...I am, without a doubt, in the South.

This is just a brief little description of where i went yesterday, so that i will not forget it.

Sometimes, i write this as letters to space. The nice thing about these letters is that the internet is infinite carbon copies.

I went to a town that is sort of a suburb of Atlanta (~20 minutes away), it is a strip mall paradise, Emily reminded me what a subdivision is. This was a town where i think most of the houses were situated within subdivisions.

I was in this town to get my car's windshield fixed. I have a friend whose brother installs them for a living. She has become a consistent person that we spend time with, along with her kinda boyfriend.

She is friendly, optimistic, and energetic, if a bit neurotic. She has a southern accent that seems to be fading with more time in graduate school. She is not an idealist and it is clear that she has some issues with race that are embedded in her mind, probably due to a certain kind of upbringing that was cemented when no one was willing to tell her not to be a racist.

The plan was to meet at her parents' house, have her brother install my windshield for $165 dollars, possibly have dinner, and then to go home. I guess I've been so insulated from this 'America' that I'd forgotten what it was like. Immediately upon shaking hands, I was transported to my fathers house. A man with a medium build and a goatee, drinking beer and taking down his above-ground pool for the winter. A woman cleaning her house for the week, Velveeta cheese on the stove, and a bible verse pulled up on a laptop. Football was playing on three televisions in three rooms with a radio broadcast game in the garage.

My friend's brother had an adorable new baby, and the baby's mother drifted aimlessly from place to place as we waited for my new windshield to set.

There was a cute small dog. It liked to chew on golf balls. If you hit the balls into the woods with a golf club, the dog would sprint in and retrieve them for you. The dog had dark fur with tan accents. As Em and I stood, watching the brother hit balls into the woods, two other children riding a four-wheeler, and listening to stories about my friend's childhood, the sister-in-law made a seemingly innocuous observation.

"Good thing that dog's black. I white dog wouldn't fetch them that way."

I laughed at the observation, not knowing what it meant, in an effort to be polite. I'd laughed at everything i heard to that point, even though most of the jokes were not funny. Then Em and i made eye contact, and i realized that i should not be laughing.

In fact, i was appalled. I returned to a moment minutes earlier when my friend told me that that the family had left their old neighborhood because it was too "dark". I was reminded about this later. I also returned to several things that just...were wrong I've heard my friend say. Her kinda boyfriend calls her out on this stuff, usually before I open my mouth.

Anyway, this was all disgusting. Em and I sat with our friend in the living room, and ate chili and velveeta and cheese and watched football. Then we drove home feeling kinda sick. Or I felt kinda sick anyway.

The short version brings me back the title of this post.

I am, without a doubt, still in the South.

love,
-kltee