When I announced to my family that I would be joining my boyfriend in Alabama and leaving
New York City behind me, there were mixed reactions. Some said, “Are you freaking kidding me?” while others said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Friends and strangers alike offered their unsolicited opinions, which mostly ran along the lines of, “You’ll never fit in there.” (question: do they even have bagels in Alabama?” Answer: "No.")
But my uncle, who is not one to dispense advice or wisdom of the How to Live Your Life variety – although will not hesitate to dispense a violent opinion on What Movies You Should Hate – said something that made up for the negative vibes I was getting from so many. “We’re not a family of risk-takers,” he said. Which is true; they all still live in New York City. Or, as in the case of my grandmother,
New Jersey, which is where you go when you get too tired to deal with the City full time but can’t bear to be too far away from the action. Although I’m sure he felt slightly alarmed by my decision, he was fully supportive. However, when I asked if he’d come visit me, there was a lot of hemming and hawing and not-too-subtle changing of the subject. My uncle is of the Woody Allen variety New Yorker, who thinks the U.S. consists of two states: New York, and Not New York. Not New York is not a place worth his time, unless he has to go there on business.
Since I’ve moved, some people have changed their tune a bit. When I go home for visits, and to get my City fix, my friends gather round to hear fables of growing green things called Trees, and monsters that live in your sink and chop up left-over food so you don’t have to put it in the regular garbage and stink up the kitchen. I am asked over and over to repeat the Tale of Two Bathrooms, in which I regale them with stories about homes so spacious, they actually have room for more than one commode.
Friends listen in awe while I tell them of my driving escapades, of how I am not limited in the number of errands I run or the amount of groceries I can buy by what I can carry the quarter mile and four flights of stairs back to my apartment. I tell them of warehouse-sized stores where you can buy toilet paper in a bulk-size that rivals their closet space.
Of course, they don’t all believe me. Some of my tales of suburbia are just too outrageous to be true. Swimming pools that are outdoors, for example. Well, swimming pools, period. One friend fainted when I told her how much I now pay for a gym membership.
I have created a new breed of New Yorkers who are starting to think seriously about Alabama, a state they were aware of only peripherally and usually in conjunction with an off-color joke. My 10-year-old cousin now begs her father on a regular basis to please take a trip to
Alabama. My uncle just looks pained during these conversations. “Haha!” I laugh. “Ever think your kid would beg you to take her to Alabama?” “No,” he responds despondently. “You can thank me later,” I tell him.
My mother is now thinking of renting a winter home here. There was a wooshing noise as a collective series of jaws dropped at hearing that news. The family squirmed even more. It was bad enough that I had moved to the South. Now I was influencing others. The other day my grandmother called and said, “You know, I’m sick of the snow here. Maybe if your mom gets a place there, I’ll come too.”
Soon they’ll all start flocking here and before you know it, we’ll be uprooting the trees and lobbying for a subway system (none of us know how to drive that well). On the bright side, if enough of My People do migrate here, Alabama may finally get a decent Chinese restaurant. For those of you unfamiliar, decent Chinese is never buffet-style and, if I may further enlighten you, jell-o is never found on the menu.
New Yorkers, I’ve discovered, aren’t the only ones who like to offer unsolicited opinions. Since I moved here, I have been told that I will hate it for 18 months, 2 years, 6 months… and then I will love it and will never want to go back to New York.
I don’t know about never. But a girl could certainly get used to two bathrooms.
