Regional Differences

[Pea-n-Me]

OK, just catching up. Interesting reading!

Since I suddenly have the urge for iced tea pardon me while I go pour myself a glass. [fears Arizona lemon diet iced tea is uncool] lol

Have lived in MA all my life. Growing up was like this:

Soda was "tonic" - Coke only if you want a coke/cola. Never used the term pop as a drink.

Jeans were "dungarees".

Cars were beach wagons, not station wagons.

Marinara was spaghetti sauce, not gravy. Gravy was brown and for meat and potatoes. (Although I did have one friend from the same area who called the red stuff gravy.)

We went "to the beach" or "down the Cape", never to the shore or to Cape Cod. People who live on Cape Cod live "on the Cape" (or on the Islands).

We had Jimmies on our ice cream, not sprinkles. (I've seen here before that to some in the south that could be an offensive term?)

We pretty much use dinner and supper interchangably, with dinner being slightly more formal. Both are definitely the evening meal.

My father used to call the front porch the "piazza".

We also serve from pots on the stove most times, unless we have company. Less to clean.

We generally don't take our shoes off to go in the house (unless we want to be comfortable).

Our water fountains are bubblers. (Speaking of Rhode Island they enjoy coffee milk made from syrup! I like it once in a while myself.)

Our taxis are called Cabs; their drivers are cab drivers.

We eat pizza with our hands (sometimes folded depending on the size of the slice) not with a knife and fork! Our submarine sandwiches are called subs (or Spuckies! in Boston) not grinders. And we don't usually heat them in the oven.

We go to cookouts, not barbeques.

Things that are incredible or awesome here are reffered to as being "wicked". As in "wicked cool".

When we bowl we usually bowl candlepin, not duck pin.

Some people put "snow tires" on their cars for winter driving. They are studded to grip better in the snow.

Speaking of driving, it's not as bad as people say it is here, as a Dis-er who recently visited informed me.

Our subway system is called the T. When I was growing up I rode the elevated train through Boston - it was disassembled quite some time ago when the T was modernized.

Drive In theaters were plentiful here years ago, but now they are almost all gone. Same with amusement parks.

 

[golfgal]

Now I'm confused....

Where do people not have access to grocery stores? And when/where did this come up? The closest grocery store to me is about 20-25 minutes but I certainly have access to it, I wouldn't want one any closer.


I have found that the concept of urgency varies greatly from region to region. I'm from Jersey, things must get done now. Recently I have been dealing with a lot of people from the south and midwest on a professional level... things don't happen so quickly with them

This is funny because people here hate getting the NY/NJ territory because they can never get anyone on the phone because they work like 4 hours/day (ok, maybe 6). You can also never get them to send you information you need and if they do send it, it's wrong

LOL! My husband's family is from St. Louis and they're always calling someone or another a "hoosier!" I've never heard it used that way anywhere else either.

Indiana maybe??? What exactly IS a Hoosier anyway .

Tacky? I'm not sure I'd go *that* far.

For a formal dinner party, I would probably put everything in serving bowls. But for every night dinner, I serve from pots to plates. (Our kitchen table is small and it means fewer dishes for me.)

Everybody doesn't line up with their plates at the stove, though. I assemble plates for everyone on the counter, then carry the plates to the table. (Think "restaurant" not "cafeteria line.")

If it is just us, we dish plates up from pots, etc. off the stove, mainly just to cut down on dishes. If we have any company, I put things into serving dishes and we put those on the table.

Someone posted how beautiful it was at night with lightening bugs in the cornfields. I want to say it was in Iowa or in that vicinity of the country. I never realized how pretty it would be. I would love to see a picture.

We get lightning bugs in our back yard. It is fun to watch them fly around.


The cover your plate for wedding thing got me the most.

The EXPENSIVE babysitters every where else (babysitters elsewhere are making more than most entry level jobs here).

4 year olds in kindergarten

How bad schools are in some parts of the country and more that people put UP with the bad schools

Not really "regional" but a "Disney" discovery--how EARLY it gets dark in Florida...

People that think getting 7 mosquito bites after being outside all evening is a "LOT".

What IS sweet tea????

Pop, not soda

We have hotdishes here, not casseroles

 

[awoogala]

That there are places where people ask you "where" you go to church within minutes of meeting you. In that bent, that they ASSUME you go to church right away.
I'd be in shock that someone was so nosy about something so personal.

 

[spacemountainmom]

I am a Minnesotan through and through, but my in-laws moved to Memphis 12 years ago. I was completely lost the first time I ordered ice tea in a restaurant and the waitress asked me if I wanted "sweet or un"? My mil explained and I ordered sweet....oh my, big mistake! Their idea of sweet and mine are not the same!

Another time we visited a fast food restaurant and I ordered a coke. The cashier asked me "what kind of coke do you want?" I am looking at him like he's nuts and my fil tells me about coke being a rather generic word so I tell the guy I want coke coke and he was cool with that!

My dad had a good friend from the Marine Corp who was from New York. Dad's friend and his family came to visit when I was in jr. high. We took them out one night to our local pizza place and their oldest daughter could not get over our weird "pizza pie". She was so thrown off because it was cut into squares and not in a traditional pie manner. They also called it soda and we called it pop.

It is funny to see the differences in things in different parts of the US.

 

[awoogala]

Yes.
You register prior to your bridal shower and that is where the bride gets all that she's registered for.
By the time the wedding comes, most gifts have been bought off the registry and you just give cash.

It's not unheard of for people to give gifts for weddings, but they are generally mailed to the bride's house BEFORE the wedding, instead of brought to the reception. In general, though, cash is the preferred gift for every wedding I've ever been to in jersey.
The whole "covering your plate" thing has gotten out of hand. We generally give $200, as a couple. It's not my fault if you went overboard and decided everyone needed $400 plate dinners, lol!!!

 

[PrincessKsMom]

The whole September 11th mindset I understand. As we have been planning our 10th anniversary coverage, it has been eye opening as people who were on the east coast 10 years ago are much more moved today at the anniversary than those who were on the west coast.
While it happened before before most of us were born, Pearl Harbor still has a bigger impact for many of us. Most of us have known or are related to people who were there, or relatives of the 2,400 who died, but don't know any of the people at the Twin Towers or the 1,600 people who died there.
But, this is a community that at one point has 5 Air Force bases within a 70 mile radius, and 4 Army depots.

Don't mean to be picky, but I believe almost 2800 people died on 9/11, most of which were in NYC, but many at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA. Given our druthers, I'm sure everyone would have preferred it closer to 1600.

ETA: I had the figure 2752 in my head, but upon further research it seems the total is somewhere above 2800.

 

[poohs_hunny]

I once had a drink thrown at me while working at a counter service restaurant at WDW over this very issue. The guy ordered a "coke," so I rang up a Coke and when the person handed him the drink he was LIVID. She was from AZ and I'm from Chicago, we were dumbfounded. I apologized, stating that I thought he had ordered a Coke. He replied that he did. So I asked what the problem was? That is when he launched the drink at me, just threw it right at me. He was ranting how I was so rude not to ask what kind of coke he wanted. I just stood there shell shocked because I did not get it at all. Other CMs had got a manager and they dealt with it. The other girl and I kept asking him to just tell us what drink he wanted and we'd get it, no problem, but he was so unbelievably angry.

Another guest, who witnessed it, was from Tennessee and explained what happened.

How horrible! Didn't the guy realize that you hadn't asked him what kind of "coke" he wanted and so should have specified or at least said to you that you hadn't asked what kind. Instead he just waited until his order was filled and then threw a fit. Did he expect you to read his mind? It seems like he was looking to make a scene from the start. What a piece of work!

 

[Robinrs]

Lots of stuff already mentioned, but the three that come to my mind right now are:

1) There are way more Catholics in the US than I knew before I was on the DIS and starting making DIS friends around the country. It's more of a minor denomination in this part of the country, with the majority of Catholics being Latino or being transplants from the north.

I grew up in a predominately Jewish community, Crown Heights Brooklyn. I actually thought that if you were white, you had to be Jewish! The first NON jewish white person I found out about was John Kennedy. I asked my Mom why did they say he was Roman Catholic? He's JEWISH, right? (note: I was SIX) It was right then when my Mom told me that Jewish was a religion, not a race.

I grew up around mostly first generation immigrants, Italians, Caribbeans, Russians, Chinese etc. Everyone was FROM someplace.

Moving to Georgia I found out about people living in other states instead of from other countries. I will never forget meeting my first midwesterner. No attitude, no real accent, I was amazed by her . I had NEVER met a Ohio person, anyone from any midwestern town, never even met a Texan. When I was growing up in NY, people were from other countries and transplants from the South. California and Florida were the only states that I really knew a lot about, Californians came to NY to work and Florida was NY graduate school..

Atlanta is a true melting pot of transplanted Americans. I came here in my 30s and got a lifetime of knowledge in different cultures and regions. It has been an adventure.

 

[Michelle67]

even more puzzling to me, was the poster who thought saying "what?" when you didn't hear someone was rude. She asked "whatever happened to "ma'am?" or "sir?"?" I still do not understand how saying "ma'am?" conveys the message that I did not hear what the person said.

That some people feed the kids dinner early, before the parents. Even when the parents are eating only an hour or so later and it's not like it's way past the kids bedtime or anything.

Snipped it up to save space, hope you don't mind.

On the first you were responding to me. That's exactly why we weren't allowed to say "what?" or "huh?" because my dad thought it was extremely rude and sounded ignorant. Foul that one up and he'd say "HUH?" back at you really loudly and with a stupid look on his face. (We never did say ma'am or sir instead, though) Which I guess beats what he would do if you were rude enough to reach across the table instead of asking for something to be passed---stab the back of your hand with his fork. Wouldn't draw blood, but it would get your attention.

On the second, you reminded me of my mom talking about how shocked she was that some relatives of my father served the kids dinner separately, at a different table, and they ate different food. For instance, the adults would have a steak dinner and the kids would get hot dogs. It really bothered my mother. She never did that to us at home. If we could afford steak at all, then everyone got it. If all we could afford was oatmeal toward the end of the month, then everyone got oatmeal.

This may or may not get a smile out of anyone, and NO OFFENSE is intended. There's regional differences and then there are regional prejudices: My mother was from Vallejo, CA and my dad from Oklahoma. When my mother told her family that they were getting married, my grandfather freaked out and said "Sister, you CAN NOT marry an Okie! They're uneducated and they let pigs and chickens run through the house!" My father was a flight engineer...definitely not "uneducated," for one thing. But he thought that was so funny that he told his mother. My mother was MORTIFIED, then, when the first time she met her soon-to-be MIL, my grandmother smiled and said "Come on in, Sweetie. And you're welcome to look around, I promise there's not a pig or chicken anywhere in here." Gotta love my Mee Maw.

eta: by "regional prejudice" I meant an individual's prejudice against a region, not that all people from Vallejo are/were prejudiced against people from OK or anywhere else...just that he personally was prejudiced against everyone from that region.

 

[Robinrs]

The whole September 11th mindset I understand. As we have been planning our 10th anniversary coverage, it has been eye opening as people who were on the east coast 10 years ago are much more moved today at the anniversary than those who were on the west coast.
While it happened before before most of us were born, Pearl Harbor still has a bigger impact for many of us. Most of us have known or are related to people who were there, or relatives of the 2,400 who died, but don't know any of the people at the Twin Towers or the 1,600 people who died there.
But, this is a community that at one point has 5 Air Force bases within a 70 mile radius, and 4 Army depots.

It's all relative. I watched the twin towers being built outside of my bedroom window for years. I remember resenting the fact that history was going to be effected because it was taller than the Empire State bldg, but ran to see it the day it opened. After all those years of watching it go up I finally got to see the finished product.

Seeing it go down was more than tragedy to me. My niece, who had moved to California the week earlier, lost everyone in her former company on that day. My cousin, who worked in the Mayor's office, succumbed to lung problems 4 years ago. Worse of all, my home was being invaded. I felt violated and so did everyone who was from NY gathered in my office that day. I worked in a radio station back then (CHAOS!!), and all of the NYers came back to my office to cry and vent. NO ONE understood us, they felt sympathy and remorse but not EMPATHY.

I still see that years later. If you're from the cities affected, it's just different.

 

[HsvTeacher]

I have lived in Alabama all my life, and when I was growing up, we always gave actual gifts when we were invited to weddings.

When I married an Italian guy from Connecticut, he thought it would be funny not to tell me about the "envelopes" that he knew we would receive at our wedding. Later on that night, I thought it was kind of tacky that no one had given us a gift...until he handed me the envelopes. I thought I was going to pass out! Come to find out, they were very (VERY!!!) generous!

 

[golfgal]

I have lived in Alabama all my life, and when I was growing up, we always gave actual gifts when we were invited to weddings.

When I married an Italian guy from Connecticut, he thought it would be funny not to tell me about the "envelopes" that he knew we would receive at our wedding. Later on that night, I thought it was kind of tacky that no one had given us a gift...until he handed me the envelopes. I thought I was going to pass out! Come to find out, they were very (VERY!!!) generous!

Here too, it's just part of your wedding planning, where to put the gift table (AWAY from the door) and who is responsible for getting all the gifts to where ever the gift opening is.

 

[golfgal]

Another one I though of were just various convenience stores and grocery stores that are regional. You see a lot of posts here about "just run into _____ store" except we don't have ______ store and I have no idea what you buy at that store .

 

[vwlizard]

I"ve lived in NJ, Upstate NY, Vermont, Chicago area and Boston area.
I never knew that people thought that no one eats dinner at 5:00.

I currently live in a neighborhood (outside of Boston) of mostly stay at home moms. A lot of the dads either work from home or work near home. I usually have dinner on the table around 5:30. I know most of my neighbors do, as well, because all the kids have to head home from playing by 5.

 

[tlbwriter]

One thing I've noticed is the concept of the "next town." People say "just go the next town" as if every town was no more than 10 minutes from the next one. There are lots of places in the U.S. where the next town is 30 minutes or an hour away.

 

[golfgal]

I"ve lived in NJ, Upstate NY, Vermont, Chicago area and Boston area.
I never knew that people thought that no one eats dinner at 5:00.

I currently live in a neighborhood (outside of Boston) of mostly stay at home moms. A lot of the dads either work from home or work near home. I usually have dinner on the table around 5:30. I know most of my neighbors do, as well, because all the kids have to head home from playing by 5.

Dinner "hour" here is between 5-6. I don't know anyone that doesn't eat during that time on a regular basis (sure sometimes if you get home late from a football game or whatever).

 

[roscoepc1]

That reminds me-I thought everywhere you went around the country most people were Catholic like they are here.
I've always felt kind of weird for not being catholic since the majority of people I know are.
Well, I don't feel weird now, but in school when I wasn't making communion, or confirmation, was happily eating meat on Fridays, didn't give up anything for Lent, etc..
I am Protestant and had no clue that that is more common than Catholicism in other parts.
Almost every single person I knew growing up was Irish, Italian or both. So the Catholic thing makes sense. I was the only non Catholic Italian I knew, until I met my husband.

Anyway, to go along with that-I had no idea that in other parts of the country nothing is scheduled on Wednesday nights because that's church night or whatever. (Youth group? something..I forget, but I know my friend was surprised that we had stuff scheduled on a Wed night because they would never do that in her area because of church activities)

I live in a rural area of Ontario....a very Protestant area, btw...when I was 5, my uncle announced he was marrying his girlfriend, and she was CATHOLIC! I was one of their flower girls, and I got to meet a REAL NUN (the bride's sister)! I was popular at school for quite a while b/c I was the only person there who had actually met a nun!

LOL- I couldn't believe it when I heard that in some places you had to pay if you wanted to do school sports, clubs etc!

Book fees blew my mind too- can't even get half the kids parents to buy the supplies they need nevermind pay fees for books!

Property taxes kill me too--people in places pay less than 6,000 a year in property tax!

Ours are about $1400, including water and sewers....one of many reasons we chose the village we did to live in!

 

[golfgal]

LOL- I couldn't believe it when I heard that in some places you had to pay if you wanted to do school sports, clubs etc!

Book fees blew my mind too- can't even get half the kids parents to buy the supplies they need nevermind pay fees for books!

Property taxes kill me too--people in places pay less than 6,000 a year in property tax!

Property taxes on our first house were $400/year, yes, HUNDRED, not thousand

 

[PrincessKsMom]

Dinner "hour" here is between 5-6. I don't know anyone that doesn't eat during that time on a regular basis (sure sometimes if you get home late from a football game or whatever).

Aren't your regular business hours 9-5? Unless everyone is a SAHM, I can't see how it's possible. I work 9-5 in NYC. I get home about 6 p.m., then have to cook,so we usually eat by 6:45 or 7 p.m.

 

[KristaTX]

Aren't your regular business hours 9-5? Unless everyone is a SAHM, I can't see how it's possible. I work 9-5 in NYC.

I've always wondered something since the movie 9 to 5, and it could be a regional difference. Typical full-time office work hours here (Texas) are 8-5 (8 hours with a 1 hour lunch break). Do people really just typically work 9-5 in New York or other parts of the country? Do you work through lunch?