Apparently, Stereotypes Are There For a Reason

                Some guy came into work today and stood talking to the pharmacist about hunting and fishing for about 7.3 years.  I was concentrating on filling prescriptions, but I overheard snippets of their conversation, and I was compelled to write them down so I could share them with you.

              

  I will preface these comments thusly:

I live in Mississippi.  Now, when I said that, what was the first thought that came to your mind?  Some backwoods town with a population of 200 people, 400 pickups, 79 meth labs, and 7 teeth?  Or maybe a tiny, run-down shack with a toilet-planter and 7 rusted vehicle chasses?

This is not the case (most of the time…).  Most Mississippians are just as intelligent as anyone else.  But there are many who give credence to these stereotypes, such as the interesting individual who uttered the following phrases:

1. (talking about deer hunting) “…done put a hole in him ‘bout yea big [holds up a Red Bull], could look down in ‘im ‘bout that fer, too.  Looked like ya’ put a three-n-a-quarter drill bit an’ yanked it out.”

2. “Ah reckon huntin’ is ‘bout 57% luck.  The rest is sweat ‘n’ spit.”  It's Bubba the freaking statistician...

3.  “We got’s us an ‘in-R-essin’ sit-che-a-shun’” (interesting situation, in case you aren’t fluent in hillbilly).

I was barely able to keep from laughing in his face.

On an unrelated note, my coworker shared a story today about an experience she had in her college drama class.  This is almost verbatim.

“I was taking a theater class and our teacher was one of those drama nuts.  You know what I mean?  Everything had a deep, deep significance.  Anyway, it was a night class so lots of the students were older.  As part of the class we had to pick a partner and act out some scenes.

“One of the students was a middle-aged black lady who was never far from a bottle.  She would always roll in with stories about how wasted she was the night before.  When I heard that we had to act with partners, I immediately picked her.  One of the scenes we were supposed to act out was one from The Women.  I was supposed to sneak around a house, trying to get information.  She was a cleaning lady who catches me.

“Because we were acting it out in the hallway, we decided to pretend that the doors in the hallway were the windows I was snooping through.  As I’m making my way down the hallway, staying low, because that’s what the lady in the movie did, I reach the door to the men’s restroom.  I am oblivious to this fact, because I’m so nervous about everyone watching me.  I lost my balance trying to stay low and fell to my knees.  Of course, the door bursts open and there stands another one of my other professors, and I’m suddenly all up in his junk.  He yelped and jumped back into the bathroom, and I fell over backwards.  The entire class is laughing so hard they are about to have seizures, and my partner is rolling on the floor holding her sides.”

I lol'd.