Since first year, I’ve been at a disadvantage in small talk. I don’t love small talk to begin with, but, as one of the University’s many catch-all NoVa kids, I’m also ill-suited for the “hometown, major” discussion. I have lived in Virginia for my entire life, and while the University is — at least in terms of football attire — a southern school, I have never felt like a real Southerner.
To backtrack, I have sufficient heritage to arguably claim Southernness. I love sweet tea, I’ve always had a weakness for lost causes and while NoVa may not feel like the South, it is surrounded by Southern states on all sides. Furthermore, my paternal grandparents are from Georgia and Texas, and my dad grew up in Virginia.
Although Northern Virginia and Charlottesville are located in the geographic South, my current areas of residence are a far cry from the cultural South. This, along with the fact that I like Hemingway more than Faulkner and shy away from PBR, puts me beyond saving as a true Southerner.
Since coming to college, I’ve found another reason why I can’t be a true Southerner — my inability to say “y’all.” It’s not that I have a problem with the term; in fact, I think it fills a void in English grammar. It’s more that I have never been able been able to say the word without feeling like a phony. For many people I know, “y’all” simply entered their vocabulary at a certain point in college. I never had such an experience, not because I lacked context to use “y’all,” but because I could never bring myself to say it. Instead, I found myself constantly reverting to the plural “you” or — even worse — “you all.”
It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that NoVa, while located in Virginia, is separate from the real South. There are certainly no southern twangs in the Northern Virginia accent, but I didn’t even know NoVa was its own region until high school. I had heard the term before, but I always assumed it referred to the local community college or to Villanova. I also thought NoVa Community College was Villanova for an embarrassingly long time.
In addition, taking United States history as a kid, I always thought of myself as Virginian — part of a unified state. However, now that I have met people from the other 90 percent of the state, I recognize the distinction and think of myself as a Northern Virginian.
This is not to say that anything about Northern Virginia deserves the separate recognition. NoVa is not just a boring icebreaker answer, but a boring place. There is no strong cultural identity beyond the traffic on 495. While it’s a great place to raise kids, when I fantasize about graduation, I don’t see myself finding a place in Vienna. If Northern Virginia is a cultural category, it is not a very interesting one. We are not from the South, but we are certainly not from the North. Instead, we are a DC suburb, a flux-state.
I think what disappoints me most about NoVa is the lack of a sense of home. I am envious of places with cultural quirks, of people who have a touch of a southern accent to spice up their daily interactions and a collection of rural metaphors to enhance their speech. While I certainly can’t call myself Southern now, anything is possible once I move away from my longtime place of residence in Northern Virginia.
Christian’s column runs biweekly Fridays. He can be reached at c.hecht@cavalierdaily.com.
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