Differences Between the North and the South

No, I do not want to relive the Civil War (AKA the War of Northern Aggression). Rebels, get over it – we lost and we deserved to lose. Besides, it was 150 years ago!!!! But, the North and the South are different and several very important ways.

Bathrooms – Northern bathrooms are clean. I noticed this on my first trip up to Wisconsin and South Dakota for residency interviews. They are also heated. Somewhere south of St. Louis, the cleanliness in all bathrooms (commercial and rest area) goes down significantly. I hate to wash my hands in the bathrooms because I’m afraid they’ll be dirtier than when I started. I carry individual wipes in my purse.

Humidity – It is dry up North. I use hand lotion several times a day and still have dry hands. I used hand lotion once while down South. In fact, my feet aren’t even scaly any more. I normally have to lotion my feet every night and still have dry feet. Seven days in the Deep South has cured by my dry feet. However, it has restarted my acne and oily hair. So, there are pros and cons.

Hair issues – In the North, I wash my hair every couple of days. But, I also find that I have to keep it in a ponytail or braid because the the static electricity makes me look like Firestarter (I was going to include a picture but decided that it might frighten small children). In the South, I have to shampoo every day despite having almost waist-length hair because it gets incredibly oily. Just a short walk down the street, and I’m down to oily and stringy hair.

Kissing – Who knew that kissing could be different by location? Down South, where Mr. Math Tutor and I learned to kiss, we had to negotiate the dance of which way to tilt your head in order to not butt noses while kissing. Up North, in the winter at least, there is no head tilting. The best way to kiss is to let your noses touch first to discharge static electricity and then to kiss. Without this vital step, you could blow up – or at least have mile electrical burns to your lips.

Food – Yankee food is boring. They think boiled fish up here is a great. Let me assure you – it is not. Spices are found in “foreign” restaurants like Chinese places and Outback. Northerners (especially in places like Wisconsin) like to steam their food with delicate spices and serve lots of green and yellow veggies. Southern cooking is something different. For one thing, there is no such thing as vegetarian. And, we don’t steam our food – we fry it. And then there’s Cajun food. We had lunch at Parrain’s in Baton Rouge which was delicious enough to knock your socks off. And there was enough left for catfish poboys on the road the next day. Talk about good. And, Thursday night was the annual boiled shrimp and crawfish dinner. Shrimp doesn’t much agree with me, but I just adore boiled crawfish, including sucking the heads. Wisconsinites will tell you that the Northern way of eating is healthier, but I would disagree. The Madison way of eating may be healthy, but the average, rural Wisconsinite wants a large slab of meat perhaps with cheese. I would argue that neither diet is inherently healthy, but that the Southern food is infinitely more delicious. BTW, I will be doing a post with food pictures later this week. Yep. It was that good.

That’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure I’ll add to this later if I come up with anything else.