Uncle Rufus Comments on Culture

Dear Cousin Cletus,

Well, I done it agin. I left the holler long enough to visit mah grandkids in the big city.

My, you jest wouldn’t believe the difference in the way them city folks live.

“Granpa,” they said, “Come eat dinner at our house on New Year’s Day.” How wuz I suppose to know they meant supper?! Dinner is whut you eat a noon time, right? So I shows up at noon, expectin to fill my gullet wif some good eats.

They took me to some eatin place whur you stand at the counter and tell ‘em whut you want to eat, and then stand there and wait while they make it. It wasn’t like Gert’s Gulp and Go down in the holler, where a waitress comes to yer table and takes yer order. I guess it must be hard to find good waitresses like Gert these days. Or mebbe the younger generation don’t know how to read and write, cuz they just punch buttons when ya order.

I learnt that people really think different in the big city. You know how my granddaughter works for some big office building downtown? Well, she got into trouble fer somethin’ she said, and had to go to this meetin’ they call “sensitivity trainin.” I couldn’t see nothin’ wrong with her statement. She jest said to someone at work, “I’m gonna haf to be (name of a ethnic group) wif mah money this weekend.”

And fer that, they made her go fer a week an listen to people tell her how wrong it wuz to offend people like thet. Imagine! An while she wuz sittin there listenin to all the whoopdedoo, she met a woman who had to be there cuz she said, “The weather sure is crazy today!” They said she wuz gonna offend people with mental problems. She had to waste a whole week, listenin to them tell her whut she couldn’t say no more.

Cletus, it shore makes a body wonder whut this generation is comin to. Do they have polyester fer brains or somethin?

I think them people in the big office buildins oughta have to work fer a livin like the rest of us. Let ‘em get outside and sweat a little, and they’d see how normal people think.

As fer offendin people with some little somethin you say, well, they oughta put on their big boy pants and realize life ain’t fair. The rest of us normal folks shouldn’t have to tiptoe around, worryin about offendin somebody jest by sayin some little thing. Think I’ll ship a truckload o’ big boy pants and pacifiers to the big city.

And thet’s the story of mah visit, Cletus. I wuz real glad to get back to the holler, where folks is normal-like. Y’all come see us sometime.

Yours truly,

Cousin Rufus