Need some help from southerners here. [View all]

[erinlough]

I'm from Michigan and around here people are blunt and very open. When I am down south I don't know how anyone feels, I can't read them. One time I was in Tennessee and mentioned to a store clerk how friendly everyone was, she had told me she was a transplant from my state. She counceled me that the smiles are real only if your passing through not if you try to live there. When I was a kid and we would travel to Florida to see my grandparents I would see banners on the highway Yankees go home. So my question is, how do you negotiate and understand southerners? I have handled my discomfort by just not traveling to the south, not a good way to compensate. I tend to try to understand everyone, but the south has me stumped.