Southern Voice

Ever since I can remember, I’ve known that I was…different. Southern. I always felt like a country girl trapped in a Californian body. Even my mom notices.


“It’s weird Shallon,” she said while I was home. “You love iced tea and humidity and sassing and rodeo and are unusually good at making pies. You use odd phrases like ‘you can put kittens in the oven, don’t make ‘em biscuits.’ I think you got…the gene.”




Both sides of my family have roots in the deep south—Virginia and Georgia—dating all the way back to the revolutionary war, and apparently those hillbilly bones have mutated our very DNA, laying latent until just the right piece of cherry cobbler awakens it.

Even boys notice. Whenever I meet a guy from the South, they all say that I remind them of girls from back home because I make them feel like MEN, unlike dour northern Merediths. So while I was home, my mom and my darling friend Dorit officially ordained me as a Southern girl. YEE HAW!!