Elementary School longings...

Well, I may actually sort of be making friends in this town. However, it seems, as usual, I am making acquaintances with the guys first. This doesn't really bother me, it's always been this way. The first friend I made when I moved to Virginia when I was 6 was a boy who put ketchup in his applesauce. He sat beside me at our little round table and had a rat-tail (oh, the early 90's). Sometimes, I long for those days in kindergarten, when making friends was easy--everyone is your best friend when you are six. You don't have pre-conceived notions of the world, you don't expect things out of people, and the 30 minutes you spent playing on the playground with this person was enough to convince you that they were the coolest person alive and that they needed to be your friend. We lose the simplicity of life. We feel the need to connect on a deeper level with people; we need to find people with which we have similarities--it is not good enough that they also like to play in the sandbox, or helped you when you fell off of the monkey bars. Thank you, my long lost friends--the rat-tailed boy who ate ketchup on everything, the girl who convinced me that Bloody Mary would appear if we shouted her name 3 times in the mirror, the girls who made me their captain of girls-chase-boys on the playground, and the boys that ran from us--for teaching me about not only the simplicity of friendship, but for giving me memories that will last a lifetime.

Carry me back to Old Virginny...

So I explained to my sister that I hadn't been blogging because work has been crazy since Christmas. And then...submissions stopped coming in and it majorly slowed down this afternoon. Of course, that's fine with me because I have been bombarded for like 2 weeks. A couple moments to myself at work is nice.

I have decided that I miss the fake-niceties in the South. Even when people were peeved with you at work, they didn't show it, they didn't give a hint of it at all. You felt good--like what you were doing was good and you were appreciated (whether that was the truth or not). I miss that. I can clearly tell when people aren't happy with me here in Philadelphia. As a girl raised in the "put on your happy face" and "oh, bless her heart" South, it's been one of the culture shocks that I have received. People are very up-front here, getting angry from waiting in line too long, huffing when they have to bring papers to your desk ALL THE WAY from the printer on the other side of the room... I attempt to manage my sweet "thank you" when my co-worker shuffles over here and smacks papers down on my desk. All she mutters is "uh huh!" sharply and walks away.

As the Southern Belle in PA, I have to ask, Pennsylvanians...Where's the love?? I miss my Virginia and our beloved State Motto, "Virginia is for Lovers." What is Pennsylvania for? Blaring horns, shouted curse words, and eating lunch at your desk so there is no forced interaction?