Everyone always talks about the great southern hospitality you find when traveling through the “South,” where everyone smiles, asks how your day is and genuinely means it, and will even bake you a cake if you are a newcomer to the neighborhood. And this does hold true, if you are in the South. For those of you who don’t know, yes Florida is located in the south but it is not part of ‘the South’ like the Carolinas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama. We are generally more inclined to flick you off than ask politely with a southern twang in our voice how your day is going. We are a melting pot with ingredients flown in from overseas, transplanted down from the north, paddled in from the tropical islands below us, and imported (sometimes illegally) from our Spanish neighbors. Together, we coexist as peacefully as can be expected for such a wide array of ingredients.

A few years ag, I had the pleasure of living in the true south for a few years while attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Now that was truly a southern town. I was amazed at how nice and pleasant everyone was. Almost reminded me of a scene from Pleasantville. You just couldn’t believe that these people were for real. And all sorts of people lived there and they were all just as nice as the next. I was flabbergasted. Then I moved back to Orlando. Back to road rage, rude people, crazies, people limited by the language barrier, and tourists. I wanted to immediately return to the south. Instead I stuck it out trying to keep an open-mind that perhaps everything is not as it seems.

This morning I walked into my local Starbucks to order my normal Friday coffee and was greeted pleasantly, by name, by the barista. Earlier in the morning when I walked into my

gym, I had also been greeted by name by Mike, the employee who works behind the counter at 5am, who asked how I was doing and even bid me to have a good weekend as I left for the day. Not even 8am and twice I have been greeted by name, asked how I was doing, and told to have a great weekend. Perhaps there is hope for Orlando after all. Granted these are my local spots that I frequent multiple times during a week but it made my Friday morning that much nicer to have someone not only ask me how my day was thus far but to ask using my name. Reflecting upon it now, I have frequented about 4-5 Starbucks in the past two years and at each one of them they took the time to ask my name, learn my drink and generally have a pleasant conversation with me when I ordered my coffee. I have also experienced similar niceties at other establishments in the Orlando area. People who give you hope that while we may not have that “Southern” hospitality reputation, perhaps we aren’t soo… bad after all.

I’m going to hold out hope that in general the people of Orlando are nice, pleasant people who genuinely are not rude and obnoxious but simply appear that way due to the stressors placed upon them. Stressors such as intense heat year round, the harrowing adventure of driving down I-4, always being in the Disney bubble and living in the shadow of “the Mouse,” being inundated with continual “improvements” to roadways, and, of course, the crime rate which seems to steadily increase. Deep down, I believe we all are nice individuals who don’t like to yell obscenities out our driver side window. Maybe there is some Southern Hospitality in us, we just have to dig a little bit deeper to find it.

post by leslie