Southern Discomfort

WHEN I LOOK back on it, I guess I can blame the Army. Somewhere back in the early '70s, they drafted my father, an articulate. Harvard-educated physician, and sent him to Roanoke, Va. Not even someplace nice, like Antarctica, but Roanoke--home of the largest block of coal cost of Mississippi. I guess I can also blame my father for not fleeing northward as soon as the Army released him, remaining in the South and scaling my fate.

Far worse than the mark of Cain, or even the mark of the Beast, is the stigma I carry. It gets me laughed at in class, thrown out of bars, and brings me constant shame. What is it?

A southern accent.

Wherever I go, it follows me, like a piece of bubble gum stuck to my heel, bringing humiliation and discomfort with it.

There are all different kinds and degrees of prejudice, but it's time people recognized another kind of discrimination: the equation, at Harvard and elsewhere, of southern with stupid.

When I try to explain the use of celestial imagery in Henry IV, my classmates snicker and giggle at each polysyllabic word I pronounce, as if they think I would be much more at home singing "Folsom Prison Blues" (which I do quite well, incidentally), than talking about literature. Worse are the people who think they have to explain everything to me slowly, as if I can't think faster than I talk.

Some people have tried to console me. "Oh, southern accents are cute," they say, or "they're distinguished." My accent is neither cute nor distinguished. It is more likely to be heard at a tractor pull than echoing through the oaken halls of Tara. It hinders me in almost every new venture I try.

The invisible ball-and-chain on my tongue has its most disastrous effects in Russian class. For example, When I try to say the sentence "Yes, I would like a glass of tea," it comes our as "My horse wants to dance on your hairy daughter's love pumpkins," or something even worse. Perhaps my conversation teacher put it best: "If you were being spy in Soviet Union. Ben, you very quickly be shot." It seems an accent is nothing more or nothing less than a deformity, except that it's a deformity people seem perfectly willing to discuss in front of me.

FOR EXAMPLE, when I walk into the Coop and ask "Where are the pens?" I never get an answer. The sales girl is always far more interested in my cultural handicap than she is in the fact that I want a pen, and asks "Where are you from?"

Usually suppressing a growl, I answer "A place in Virginia called roanoke. You've never heard of it. I want a green eraseable-"

"Croatan!" she cries, "The Lost Colony, right?"

"No, that's Roanoke Island. We're just a city southwest of Charl-"

"I have a cousin in Skinned Cat, Tennessee. Do you know where that is?"

"No, look, could you just get me-"

"Do you know Duane Nussbaum? That's his name."

If I haven't gone to another counter yet, I snarl apologetically and try reaching over her to get what I want. Sometimes I think I could run out into the street crying "Help me please I'm on fire!" and people would just stand there watching me burn, saying "Where are you from?"

THE BIGGEST nightmare, however, is going to parties here. I always run into some poor girl foolish enough to ask me my name. This may seem like an innocuous, everyday event, but its effect is always an evil one. For example:

"Hi, I'm Muffin Rockefeller. What's your name?"

This is a critical moment, and it leaves me with two alternatives. The first of these, the autistic imitation, seldom works, so I grit my teeth and opt for the second. "Ben Smith."

She stares incredulously, eyebrows flying upwards, "Bane Smith?"

If I am not already home in bed by now, I blush and stammer "No; Ben."

"Bane Ben??!!"

You can see how it goes.

In response to this dazzling array of horrors, I have thought up numerous ways to protect myself. An easy way to stop the "where are you from?" ordeal dead in its tracks is to say "Latvia." If they persist, demanding "Then where did you get that accent?" "Djakarta" and "Where did you get those teeth?" are personal favorites.

But even this is not enough. I can envision a placard hanging around my neck saying:

"Yes, I am from the South, No, I do not know your uncle in Mobile. No, I was not born there. Both of my parents, in fact, are literate. No, I do not like Molly Hatchet. No, I do not watch 'Hee Haw.' No, I do not own slaves. No, I do not want any. Thank you very much. Have a nice day."

No, that wouldn't do, because everyone would think someone else had written it for me, probably so I wouldn't have to memorize it.

I guess I could do a lot of things. I could start a Redneck Table at my house. I could tell everyone that it is unfair to judge someone by his or her accent, and whatever that type of accent may imply to you.

But I think I'll just sit back and smile, and when you take that vacation this summer, and your Mercedes pulls up in front of my gas station, it will be my turn.

"Hey, y'all fum Massytoosits! Dy all know Larry Bird?"