It's more than a matter of pace, but...
by Jack Mauro
Pray for me, y'all.
I've been diagnosed twice in the past month, and it don't look good. It appears I suffer from a running disorder. Not "running" in the sense of a disorder that is perpetually with me, you understand; no, the sickness is specific and literal. I move too quickly.
Several weeks ago an alert security guard at my workplace observed the symptoms and, civic-minded soul that she is, educated a co-worker of mine. Her evaluation was admittedly sketchy. It pretty much came down to, "That bald guy. He runs like crazy to the elevator every mornin'. He ain't right." Only days later a friend obliged me with a trip to Kroger's. I was sweeping through the aisles and tossing items into the cart—in a lively manner, I confess—and yet another concerned citizen informed my friend that she herself once suffered from my condition. And that help was available in the shape of pale blue pills.
There's an old saying: if two people say you're sick, lie down. But clearly that isn't an option in my wretched case.
Add to this disturbing state of affairs a variation on the disease from which I suffer: when excited conversationally, I raise my voice. This particular strain of my illness came to light after a heated discussion with another pal.
"Why are you yelling at me? What are you mad at me for?"
"I'm not mad at you," I shouted, lost as to why he would even think that.
"But you're screaming."
Then, out of the moment and nothing else, the truth emerged. "I'm not screaming, you jackass. I'm from New Jersey."
There it was. All of it. After my many attempts in fiction to define and explore the real schism dividing the Northerner and the Southerner, the light bulb nearly burnt out its filament in a sudden flash. I wasn't sick. I was a Yankee. In the North we run and shout. In the South you stroll and speak softly. And don't imagine that pagan alters in Jersey versus Baptist chapels here could make for a more unbridgeable gap between cultures.
Take my baffled pal and the raising of the voice. He speaks in a measured cadence, lightly twinged with accent. He is as well very young, which is important; we associate enthusiasm and volume with youth, after all. But he's from Clarksville. In his world, young or old, you yell when things are desperate. You yell when Big Daddy's napping and the house is on fire. If then. And I couldn't make him see that we swear and bellow in Jersey City when the Path train is full, or the calamari is rubbery. In either instance—in almost any instance, in fact—the bellowing takes the form of the pith and ever appropriate, "What the f—k is this?"
That single, simple sentence is as comfortably warm a vestige of home to me, as sweetly evocated as a remembered lullaby, as "Hey, good to see y'all!" is for the Tennessean.
The running is equally incomprehensible to my Southern acquaintances, and I've run out of ways to try to explain. Maybe because, somehow, it's less excusable than the shouting. There's nothing too odd about my walking briskly down Gay Street because I want to get home. Even the gallop to work makes sense in that light; the sooner there, the sooner gone.
But my pace has some serious Jersey DNA behind it. Why and when I need to get somewhere isn't the impetus for it. It's reactive, and competitive. And finding myself on the sidewalk behind a leisurely moving duet or trio of bodies acts on my psyche like a starting gun. I don't follow long, I can tell you. Hats have been known to fly off in my wake.
The mall, on a crowded Saturday afternoon? You don't want to know. Let's just say a cluster of baby strollers, when quite accidentally jostled into higher velocity, can resemble bumper cars.
Don't, I beg you, misunderstand: I am deeply attracted to Southern easy-goingness, to the languid speech of the Southern tongue and the liquid movement of the Southern limb. I envy it. At its best it is what grace is all about. But seven years in Knoxville, or a hundred years in Knoxville, won't give it to me. And, as with many a thing we covet, there is impatience and disdain in my desire.
So. Should you be walking down Gay Street and suddenly feel the back draft of a frantic pedestrian, be charitable. Don't say, "What the f—k was that?" Instead smile slowly, shake your head and mutter, "Hm. He ain't right."
January 15, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 3
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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