Lenshanem, it may well be a "southern" thing! I'm born/bred southern (S.C.) and one thing my in-laws immediately joked about when dh and I were first dating is that I'd strike up a conversation anywhere! And the use of "Yes Ma'am" and "No sir" etc when talking to older people -- that's a southern thing as well that gets noticed up north! An older woman and her dh seemed lost in a bookstore up north once, so I asked if I could help her ( "Can I possibly help you find something, Ma'am?" is what I think I said) So she told me what she needed, I told her where she could find it. Her husband then looked at me, then looked at my dh and said, pointing at me, "She's not from around here, is she?" (Of course the accent when saying it is a dead-giveaway too, I'm sure...) I get the same response at any store in my dh's home area, or when visiting my northern relatives (upstate NY). I don't have an intense southern acccent -- I always felt if I could pick out someone else's accent, I must not have one! But... my dh swears that as soon as I come in contact with anyone from the south, my moderate accent becomes a full-fledged drawl. Must be some kind of synergistic transformation between southerners!
It drives my normally reserved DH nuts how I'll start a conversation with strangers in a cash register line, or at an airport, or at WDW. My SIL and I are the same in this respect (she's not southern... just chatty, I guess!) And her dh (my hubby's brother) is equally (maybe genetically?) reserved, so the two of them sit and cringe, or try to scurry off! She and I got chatty with this fellow from Canada traveling with his young daughter (and like us, staying at VWL), and it seemed throughout our stay that everywhere we went in the parks, the resort, the pool, we kept running into them -- our dhs thought we had planned it and wanted to know just HOW much had we told this guy?!? (LOL)