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This skanky Yankee is just American

By LINDSAY BIANCHI

I was driving to work the other day when I noticed the bumper sticker on the vehicle in front of me, a black Ford truck with no license or registration showing.

This was obviously Mr. Anonymous at the wheel. He did, however, have enough wherewithal to make his feelings known, as many an American enjoys doing, by plastering his personal opinions on the backside of his car for the edification of all the other idiots on the road.

His one sticker simply stated in bold letters, “Yankees Suck.”

Being from the North, I almost decided to stalk him and find out who this “person” was. Unfortunately, I had a deadline to meet. Instead I told myself, “The pen is mightier than the bumper sticker.”

I think people from Illinois and Massachusetts and New Jersey and all those other cold, distant places like being referred to as a “Yankee” almost as much as I do.

I never thought about it one way or the other until I packed up all my subversive literature and rock-n-roll records into my big, smelly carpet bag and headed to the Promised Land, Roswell, Ga.

Soon after I arrived, my coworkers who were born here began to point out my “Yankee” status. They would say, “You Yankees this...” and “You Yankees that...” I was not amused.

My reply was usually, “I’m not a Yankee. I’m an American, just like you.” Well, that usually left them speechless, mostly because it sounded so lame. But I still feel that way, and I suppose I always will.

It seems to me that people south of the Mason-Dixon line have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. The War Between the States ended almost 140 years ago, but the spirit of that resistance is alive and well in many a mind here. My advice is to let it go.

It’s over. Move on.

I wasn’t around when the Civil War went down, really! I just so happen to have been born on the winning side. Frankly, I don’t even care about winning. I just want to participate in the game.

Whether you like it or not, you are a part of this country. We are fellow Americans and it’s time that we behaved like it.

I live in the UNITED states. I have the freedom to move to any town at any time for no good reason. And that’s exactly what I did.

I like it here, despite the suffocating anti-culture that has been left to spread like so much kudzu. I’ve read “Tropic of Cancer” and I’m not apologizing for it. I don’t like oppression of any kind and that is what it feels like to be “labeled” a “Yankee.”

Call me crazy (you might as well, you already call me Yankee), but the abolishment of slavery, you know, that thing where you keep other people like house pets who can do all the menial tasks that you, yourself are too lazy to take on, that was a good thing, right?

The really sad thing is that African-Americans had to fight all over again for the basic freedoms and common respect of their neighbors whose misguided pride was just so much ignorance cloaked in society’s fancy furs.

Southerners (for want of a better term) are always saying, “If you don’t like it here, then go back to where you came from.”

The only people who should be saying that are the Native Americans.

This is a nation of immigrants. It has been so from the time of the first colonies. Our country, for as young as it is, can boast of more cultural diversity than any other nation in the world.

Somehow that fact is lost on young and old alike. Too many Americans refuse to see past their front porch. Too many Americans let others do the thinking for them. Too many Americans find it easier to label people, to put them into convenient categories.

A person is partly made up of where he or she is from. Environment plays a big role, but a person is still an individual, whether he or she is from Cucamonga, Azusa or Anaheim.

Everyone deserves a chance to be heard even if their accent is so thick you can’t tell what they are saying.

We all sit in our little circles and deride those who are not like us. We laugh at their differences, their hideous taste in clothes, their ideas about life and death.

We have all done this “sucks to be you” routine. In a way, it’s a defense mechanism. It helps to bolster our punctured pride. It’s an ego stroke.

So you can shake your head in disgust and mutter under your breath, but just remember that they are most likely doing it, too. You’re not as high and mighty as your cronies would have you believe.

I know this goes for me too. I see plenty on a daily basis that threatens to send me into a tailspin of impotent anger.

I try to remind myself every 30 seconds or so that in the grand scheme of my grandiose life, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, or grits, take your pick. You have to laugh a lot and consider the source of the vehicle in front of you.

At long last I know what to put on my own bumper. I have a blank sticker that says, “I love _________.”

I wasn’t sure for the longest time what to fill in that space with. I was going to be glib and put, “I love myself.”

That seemed a little smug, even though it’s true, in a self-help kind of way.

I thought I might put, “I love cars without stickers,” but that just sounded stupid.

Finally, it came to me. “I love thinking my own thoughts.” It’s true. I might be a Skanky Yankee to some, but in my own mind, I’m me, and that’s something everyone can dig, man.