Spend enough time down south, and you’ll notice some interesting habits. Sure, they feel completely normal there, but people from other places, especially the North, really don’t understand them. They’re not exactly stereotypes. No, it’s the everyday things, like what people order & what they call things, that really confuse others. Here are seven things that only Southerners truly understand.
1. Front-yard conversations are long visits
You won’t find many Southerners giving a quick “hello” when they’re passing by their neighbors. No, they’ll stop beside the car and keep chatting while other people come & go. It’s actually something that researchers at the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC Chapel Hill have studied, and they’ve said that porch/yard socializing is a common pattern in Southern communities. Northerners might see such visits as interruptions. But for Southerners, they’re a regular part of the day, since they recognize the slower pace and know how to stretch the conversation without it feeling forced.
2. Ordering tea means picking a sweet level
Southerners often use the word “tea” to talk about iced tea, meaning that the real question for them is about whether they want it sweet or unsweetened. In fact, food historians at Serious Eats traced the drink’s popularity back to the South’s relationship with sugar production & drinks during the hot weather. Many Southerners also keep a big pitcher of sweet tea in their fridges, with refills happening without anyone asking. Outsiders don’t realize how normal it feels for locals.
3. Getting meat-and-three
A lot of Southern lunch places operate on the meat & three rule, which involves customers picking a single main dish with three sides. These sides are usually things like green beans, mashed potatoes, and cornbread. For the North, such a setup may seem a little unusual. But meat-and-three is a regular way of ordering across states like Tennessee and Alabama. The regulars understand how the routine works, and the lines tend to move quickly because of that. It doesn’t take long for Northerners to work out what the rule involves. But they’ll never appreciate it in the same way that Southerners do.
4. Coke is any kind of soda
It’s completely normal to hear the question, “What kind of Coke do you want?” in the South, especially Texas. Northerners might answer it by saying “diet” or “regular,” but Southerners understand that the question is actually asking you what kind of soda you want. That means that you could answer the question by saying, “Pepsi,” even though it seems a little contradictory. Why does it happen? It’s mostly down to the Coca-Cola brand’s roots in Atlanta, as well as its long marketing presence in the area.
5. Bless your heart depends on tone
There’s no single definition of the phrase, “bless your heart,” and that’s something that Southerners understand far better than any Northerner. People in the South get that the meaning comes from the delivery in terms of the tone & timing. What happened right before the phrase matters. Linguists Karen Taylor & Staci Defibaugh actually wrote about how the phrase works as a social tool, which Southerners can use to show sympathy or criticism. It all depends on the context. Sadly, most Northerners miss the social cues that come from it.
6. The difference between a church supper and a potluck
Many Northerners think that a church supper and a potluck are the same thing. They’re not. In the South, people show up to the events knowing the difference, especially with who sets the tables & where the desserts go. Southerners get that a church supper tends to be more organized than a potluck. Whenever they go to a church supper, they’re expecting certain dishes and a certain rhythm, and that’s mostly because Christian denominations built traditions around these gatherings. Most Southerners have attended such events since childhood.
7. High school football stadiums are the center of town
Friday night football carries a kind of attention with it that people outside the South don’t really get. For them, the marching band entrance & parking routines feel a little over the top, but for those in the South, it’s a regular celebration. The scale of such events is connected to local identity and community structure in the South. As such, you won’t find many Southerners who need directions to the stadium. They won’t even need instructions about when to stand because they’ve become familiar with the routine over many years.
One of the main reasons these things are so widely recognized in the South is that they’re part of people’s everyday routines. They’re as normal a part of life for Southerners as eating lunch or going to work. That’s not to say that every Southerner does them. However, you’ll struggle to find many Northerners doing them, let alone understanding these things.
