Likes and Dislikes, Abridged Version

First, I would like to begin with a summary of what is true and what is not about southerners. We do love our sweet tea.
There is an art to sweet tea though. It can’t be too sweet and it can’t be too strong. The secret is to put cold water in a pot with two tea bags, bring the water to a boil, and then let the bags steep for five minutes. You then pour the mixture into a pitcher with one cup of Dixie sugar. Stir, and add water. If someone drinks a glass of your tea and then says, “As a matter of fact, I’ll just have a glass of water or a Coke if you’ve got it,” you have made an error.
Second, we do love our Coca Cola. People from North Carolina tend to prefer Pepsi, and are therefore not considered southerners.
The only good thing about Florida is Disney World. The Florida Gators are hated by the rest of the south, as are its tacky buildings and white-trash population.
Coke is the official soft drink of Disney World.
One of the biggest misconceptions of the South is that we are all Baptists. This is entirely untrue. We love too many earthly things in the south. Whether you grew up in a double-wide (in Florida) or in your family’s antebellum plantation home on the Santee River, there was something indulgent in your house. We love sex, good food, dirty jokes and strong cocktails.
A Sunday in a Baptist church is like one big reminder that each of our lavish habits is another brick in the sidewalk headed to hell. This is simply unsavory, especially since church, for many people, is about fashion, gossip, and brunch. That is why the South is heavily populated with Methodists and Presbyterians.
An account of a young southerner’s Saturday night often sounds a lot like a reading of the seven deadly sins. We are fans of what the church likes to call “joyous worship,” i.e. church that doesn’t make you feel bad about your transgressions, because we all know there will be a Bloody Mary in your hand within thirty minutes of the benediction- lets talk about what a forgiving and gracious God we have and get out of here in an hour.
Southern daddies take pride, perhaps above anything else, in their southern daughters. If they have pretty girls, fathers put pictures of them all over their offices, take their Girl Scout cookie order forms to work, and allow them to pick out whatever dress they’d like for the prom.
If they were not blessed with a pretty girl, they will put their daughter on every sports team available and make sure they get the best grades. This all comes down to marriage. The fathers of the pretty girls know their daughters will have no problem marrying well, and do not stress out about a C on a report card. Fathers of ugly girls worry that their daughters will have a harder time marrying well, and they have to make up for it elsewhere.
If you take a look in a high school parking lot, you will find that the nicer cars often belong to the uglier girls. This is their fathers’ doing. The fathers of pretty girls know that their daughters are attractive and confident enough to be able to drive an uncool car and still be popular. The ugly girls’ dads feel the need to compensate- they don’t want their girl to be the ugly girl and drive the beater car.
Once graduation comes around, the pretty girl’s father will often go into debt to make sure that his pretty girl has everything she needs for college, including a nice new car. This leaves the ugly girl with nothing but a full-ride softball scholarship, and a car that was cool four years ago. The ugly girl will see the pretty girl on campus in her new red jeep, blonde hair flowing in the wind and surrounded by sorority sisters, her hot fraternity boyfriend and cooler of beer in tow.
It seems vain and dreadfully archaic, but this is how we do things in the South- slowly and at our leisure. We like to be surrounded by lovely things- be that priceless antiques or pictures of our children. Though our states are some of the oldest in the country, you will not find another place in America that does things like we do in the South.

“Gossip is like hard currency in this town. Folks are just paying their bills.”