Southern efficiency
Having lived in North Carolina for a couple of years, I know things move at a slower pace in the South. (If you want to get particular about it, we actually live in the South now, but as anyone in the rest of Virginia will tell you, the DC suburbs are not culturally in the South.) We got a reminder when we tried to get a taxi to the Asheville Airport.
We called the night before and arranged for a 9:00am taxi, which couldn't have been easier. So when it got to be 9:10am and the taxi wasn't there, we got nervous and called to find out when the driver would get there...only to be told he had just left and was at least 10-15 minutes away. Sure enough, when 9:30am came and he still wasn't there, we called again. Now it turned out he was driving somewhere in the vicinity but, since he didn't have a cellphone, couldn't call us to get more info. I tried to give directions to the dispatcher, who passed them to the driver on the radio, but since it was our first time visiting my Mom's place I didn't know the names of the streets and had to go onto MapQuest to dictate directions. Luckily we had built a cushion into our pickup time just in case something like that happened, but even with that I thought Gretchen was going to disembowel him when he finally pulled up. It didn't help when she asked if he had a map of the area and he said "no, but I been thinkin' about gettin' one o' them GPS things." (I mean, why on earth would a taxi driver need a map? Silly Gretchen.)
After promising to get us to airport quickly and, he assured us, without getting us killed along the way, he proceeded to irritate Gretchen even more by driving with his seat back the whole way so that she had to ride with her knees up around her chin, then really compounded it by talking. And talking. And talking. And talking. Things might have gotten ugly if--much to her amusement--he hadn't all of a sudden turned his attention to me.
We were talking about buying produce at local farmers' markets (or, as they call them there, tailgate markets), when he mentioned that his sister made really good sauerkraut with jalapeños. Now, I truly can't imagine many dishes that would be more disgusting--I may have grown to like many German specialties while in Switzerland, but sauerkraut was definitely not one of them--especially when combined with jalapeños. This was evidently one of the funniest things he had heard all day, because he looked at me, laughed, and said "why, you must be a city slicker if you don't like jalapeños!" He then laughed some more and said "I sure hope you got an education to go with that city slicker!" (By the way, I still don't know what that means...besides, what do jalapeños have to do with being a city slicker, especially since North Carolina is nowhere near Mexico, unlike my hometown?)
So now when Gretchen needs to put me in my place, she can just remind me that I'm a city slicker...
We called the night before and arranged for a 9:00am taxi, which couldn't have been easier. So when it got to be 9:10am and the taxi wasn't there, we got nervous and called to find out when the driver would get there...only to be told he had just left and was at least 10-15 minutes away. Sure enough, when 9:30am came and he still wasn't there, we called again. Now it turned out he was driving somewhere in the vicinity but, since he didn't have a cellphone, couldn't call us to get more info. I tried to give directions to the dispatcher, who passed them to the driver on the radio, but since it was our first time visiting my Mom's place I didn't know the names of the streets and had to go onto MapQuest to dictate directions. Luckily we had built a cushion into our pickup time just in case something like that happened, but even with that I thought Gretchen was going to disembowel him when he finally pulled up. It didn't help when she asked if he had a map of the area and he said "no, but I been thinkin' about gettin' one o' them GPS things." (I mean, why on earth would a taxi driver need a map? Silly Gretchen.)
After promising to get us to airport quickly and, he assured us, without getting us killed along the way, he proceeded to irritate Gretchen even more by driving with his seat back the whole way so that she had to ride with her knees up around her chin, then really compounded it by talking. And talking. And talking. And talking. Things might have gotten ugly if--much to her amusement--he hadn't all of a sudden turned his attention to me.
We were talking about buying produce at local farmers' markets (or, as they call them there, tailgate markets), when he mentioned that his sister made really good sauerkraut with jalapeños. Now, I truly can't imagine many dishes that would be more disgusting--I may have grown to like many German specialties while in Switzerland, but sauerkraut was definitely not one of them--especially when combined with jalapeños. This was evidently one of the funniest things he had heard all day, because he looked at me, laughed, and said "why, you must be a city slicker if you don't like jalapeños!" He then laughed some more and said "I sure hope you got an education to go with that city slicker!" (By the way, I still don't know what that means...besides, what do jalapeños have to do with being a city slicker, especially since North Carolina is nowhere near Mexico, unlike my hometown?)
So now when Gretchen needs to put me in my place, she can just remind me that I'm a city slicker...
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