February 25, 2024
If I don’t take a breakfast biscuit from home, my usual stopping place for breakfast is the Bojangles in Dickson. For the most part, I get good service and good food which are not bad ways to start my day. The woman who usually stations the drive thru window is a very friendly southern girl. How do I know she is southern? Because she begins and ends nearly every sentence with the word “darlin’” and/or “honey”. She told me she made a woman mad the other day when she called her husband Darlin’. That man and woman must have been from New Jersey or somewhere else that is “not from around here” because using endearments like honey, darlin’, and sweetie are just part of our culture and our way of life. There are also certain words, phrases and accents that are dead give aways that you AREN’T from around here, one of which is, “I think I’ll have a bottle of pop.” This statement is usually made at restaurants when the waitress asks, “What ‘ll you have to drink, darlin’.” Another peculiar phrase non-Southerners use is “water hose” instead of “hosepipe”. Water hoses are what firemen use to battle roaring flames while a hosepipe is the instrument you connect to the spigot outside your house so you can water your garden and/or take a drink from in the summertime. For those who might be reading this who weren’t blessed to be from the south, let me help you with some other common southern expressions. “Fixin’ too” is southern for “I am about ready to do a certain task”. That word is used like this in a conversation, “I’m fixin’ to go water the yard with the hose pipe.” Another common expression is “bless his/her/your heart.” It is perfectly acceptable to say whatever you want to about a person if you use the term “bless your heart”. A sentence using this phrase would go something like this. “I can’t believe she is carrying that black purse with that blue dress, bless her heart” or “His cornbread’s not quite done in the middle, bless his heart”. I could go on all day about this, but as I am running out of room, let me bring a spiritual thought into this. Colossians 4:6 reminds us as Christians we should let our speech be full of grace and seasoned with salt. Just as you can often tell where a person was raised by listening to their speech patterns, the world should be able to tell we are Christ followers by our speech patterns. Just as we need to be sure we are walking the walk of our Christ-like calling; we should also pay attention to talk the talk as well. So, with all that being said, be blessed and go be a blessing and pass the sweet tea darlin’, bless your heart . . .
Bro. Andy