Pancake Protocol

People weren’t lying when they said that southerners were gracious. For the most part I’ve found people from this area to be polite, formal and kind in ways that you don’t find as often in the north. Not that I actually believe the people here are kinder than the people of the north. But I certainly believe that they’ve had manners bred into them from day one.

Where were our lessons? When did we learn which fork to use with which hand and when? When did the boys learn to open the door for their mothers, sisters, girlfriends and just random ladies on the street? I guess those lessons got lost during impromptu dinners at Fricker’s and surprise breakfasts at Café Marie where we stuffed our faces with chicken wings and giant pancakes, where manners and etiquette were not only unexpected, they were taboo. Proper etiquette for eating giant pancakes when you are four years old varied from rolling it up and eating it with your hands, slicing it up to create dunking sticks, taking a big bite out of the middle, or any other of the fun ways you could think up to consume such and monstrous item. Come to think of it, I would most likely fall back on that same etiquette if faced with a giant pancake today that was proportional to the pancakes of my childhood – but it seems that as I’ve gotten bigger, the pancakes have stayed the same size. There is just no room for etiquette in a face paced pancake eating world.

But should that be the case? It isn’t in the south. And living here now I find myself sometimes wishing I’d been instructed on the proper way to set a table or eat a fancy meal (or pancake). At the same time though, I don’t think 4 year-old Emily would have seen the point of learning such things. Not when the pancake could be eaten with such thoughtful ingenuity, and I certainly would not have agreed to be kept inside to learn about silly girl things. Not when there were fences to climb and lakes to swim in and other such adventures to be had. Come to think of it really, I doubt that 23 year old me would much like taking the time to master such skills either.

But here I am, at the heart of southern hospitality. Let’s just hope some of it rubs off on me while I am running across town from one job to another. If not, I guess I’ll just have to stick to wings and pancake restaurants for the rest of my life. Sounds good to me.