Doh, I think you're right... and now I can't remember what the nick is for IVth... oh! Duh. IVY. As in, IV. Okay I lost major points there. I feel like I should, I dunno, go cut some flowers or something to appease my grandmother's spirit. (heh.)
I think the arguing is maybe it's a regional thing -- as in city vs country? Not sure... When I was in Vermont, I didn't get the impression that a loud argument would be all that welcome, but I sure saw more than my happy share of them in Providence, Boston, Fall River, New York, Connecticut, Long Island... and in smaller towns in between. Maybe it's a coastal-new-england thing, or a not-so-rural kind of thing? (Some of those places, I wouldn't really qualify as "city" so much as maybe "extended suburbs".)
(Although, honestly, the most amazing and mortifying public argument ever had to be when the obviously rich Bostonian girl OVERTURNED the fully-loaded table onto her date as the exclamation point on the end of whatever she was yelling. That was certainly an extreme, seeing how it involved major tableware damage... but nowhere near the loudest argument I saw -- but then, that could also be partly ethnic, given the penchant I saw in Irish-, Italian-, and Portuguese-Americans to carry on at the top of their lungs, and top even that if they were actually pissed. It took me about two years to stop flinching when people talked to me, because it felt like they were yelling at me. I hadn't realized I was that accustomed to soft-spoken people.)
It's definitely true about the lack of smile, but that was one thing I actually liked about New England. If they didn't like what you said or were just neutral, they didn't smile; you only got a smile if there was genuine feeling -- compared to the places I grew up, where you got a smile pretty much no matter what (especially from women). It was almost a relief, because it meant I could get away with not-smiling, myself.
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Date: 13 Jan 2011 02:46 am (UTC)I think the arguing is maybe it's a regional thing -- as in city vs country? Not sure... When I was in Vermont, I didn't get the impression that a loud argument would be all that welcome, but I sure saw more than my happy share of them in Providence, Boston, Fall River, New York, Connecticut, Long Island... and in smaller towns in between. Maybe it's a coastal-new-england thing, or a not-so-rural kind of thing? (Some of those places, I wouldn't really qualify as "city" so much as maybe "extended suburbs".)
(Although, honestly, the most amazing and mortifying public argument ever had to be when the obviously rich Bostonian girl OVERTURNED the fully-loaded table onto her date as the exclamation point on the end of whatever she was yelling. That was certainly an extreme, seeing how it involved major tableware damage... but nowhere near the loudest argument I saw -- but then, that could also be partly ethnic, given the penchant I saw in Irish-, Italian-, and Portuguese-Americans to carry on at the top of their lungs, and top even that if they were actually pissed. It took me about two years to stop flinching when people talked to me, because it felt like they were yelling at me. I hadn't realized I was that accustomed to soft-spoken people.)
It's definitely true about the lack of smile, but that was one thing I actually liked about New England. If they didn't like what you said or were just neutral, they didn't smile; you only got a smile if there was genuine feeling -- compared to the places I grew up, where you got a smile pretty much no matter what (especially from women). It was almost a relief, because it meant I could get away with not-smiling, myself.