Southern quote of the day:
"If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for."

Having lived in the South all my life, I can tell you that this is a true statement. There were many changes I had to make concerning my level of trust when I moved to NYC. One of those included not accepting everything that is said for face value. City-folk will lie through their teeth and smile the entire time they're doing it. I'm not saying southerners don't lie, but at least you can take them for their word.

I suppose being raised in the South, you turn out to be very trusting. Way too trusting if you end up anywhere but your born and bred stomping grounds. Here, if I got my vehicle stuck anywhere and four men arrived in a truck, I'd either lock my doors and pray to God, or I'd just jump out, hand them the keys, and let them strip the car as they intended to do in the first place.

I can tell you right now that I won't raise a child in the city. I want to be able to tell my kids "Go play in the yard". Here, they'd have to play in the street, and there are far too many kids being plowed into by buses for me to feel safe about that. I'd rather have them in my fenced-in back yard, running about with the family dog, digging in the dirt, climbing trees, and breaking their bones as nature intended (by falling out of said trees). The chance of them being shot at is slim to none. Why? Simply because guns aren't to be shot in city limits, and every southerner knows this rule from age 10 (or as soon as you're old enough to understand the rule and it's consequences.)

After teaching in NYC for the last year, I am amazed by the difference between the two sets of children (Southern and Northern). The children here have to grow up way too fast in order to protect themselves from the adults who are in charge of their lives. Children should be able to romp free without a care in the world, and that's difficult to do in this environment... and reprogramming them is not an option. Their loss of childhood was not be choice, but simply for survival purposes. To alter them is to endanger their survival skills, and you cannot do that unless you remove them from the harmful environment. It's a shame really. I wish I could relocate them all, so that they could experience the joys of childhood as they were meant to be.