I’ve decided that so many writers come out of the South, not only because of the charm, but because of the drama.  The drama may even be the charm.  Oh, how dramatic we are, bless our sweet hearts!  We are all dramatic because our mothers’ are dramatic, as were their own.  I think it is because we are from the land of Scarlet O’Haras.  This woman rocked the world of literature, cinema, and married men everywhere, but she’s just the embodiment of the land.  The South tried it’s little hardest to tear an entire COUNTRY apart.  I picture the two sides of the Mason-Dixon line having a tea party when the lower side decides to take it’s dainty white gloves home and throw it’s own (not caring the upper side owned the teacups).

 The South throws us curve balls all the time:  a hot day in January, a hurricane that reaches all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains, a random earthquake once in a hot blue moon, a couple swing states in the world of politics.  The atmosphere and the people alike love to keep ’em all guessing. I know I do…

These absurdities that The South is are the reasons for the tall tales we hear on the front porch every summer.  Everyone knows the kind I’m talking about; the kind your grandmother tells over and over that get more unbelievable every time. We chuckle while we listen, memorizing those precious wrinkles on their faces all the while.  What we don’t realize, is that we do it too.  We’re dramatic by nature.  While we’re sitting there enjoying Mamaw’s sweet tea, we’re thinking of who we’re going to tell next, and in what yummy fashion we’ll relay it.

I came to these conclusions by noting the widespread panic caused by the weather forecast today.  I’m guilty; I’ve always reacted to snowy conditions like a cat reacts to water.  I just don’t do it.  I don’t like it, I don’t know how to drive in it, and I don’t leave my house when it comes.  I do however, enjoy it slightly one time per year, as long as it only lasts a day(which it only does), and I have access to a sled (that I use in the one inch we get).  Other than that, I’ll take summer please.

What I did like today was the pandemonium I got to experience with my fellow southern comrades.  I was chuckling looking at people post their pictures of bread and milk on Facebook.  However, I did get a little nervous when I realized I had not yet been to the store.  Being unprepared does not set well with a type “A” personality such as mine.

Nevertheless, I’m looking out the window , watching the foretelling clouds roll in the like blankets of Crisco on Thanksgiving, and I’m smiling.  I’m smiling because I am scrambling around with my soul mates, the ones who made me a writer, who do not know how many stories they’ve written.  I am scurrying through the grocery store aisles with old men who believe we are about to encounter the storm of the century, and old women who are crying over not making it to the beauty parlor today.  Then, I will get in my 4-wheel drive SUV (even though nothing has stuck yet), and nag my husband to be more careful the whole way home.  We will probably arrive safely, but I guarantee, I’ll make an adventure of it…because I’m dramatic, of course.  And you readers, you’re charmed.

“I can shoot straight, just as long as I don’t have to shoot far.” -Scarlet O’Hara ~