The Joke’s on Who?

Scarcely a day goes by that I don’t run across an article by someone with an ax to grind against southerners and that’s no exaggeration.  Due to the nature of my work here I feel a certain responsibility to keep to top of these sorts of stories for y’all so I have set up some Google alerts to bring them to my attention.  Frankly, it can wear on a belle. We are routinely mocked as less educated and less sophisticated than the rest of the country, and that’s some of the best things they say about us. But, that’s okay. We can take us for ourselves, can’t we folks? Selling us southerners short is a mistake with a long history. What these self-appointed experts never seem to realize is that sometimes the joke is on them.
Take the following story about a conversation between a census worker and a southern belle. You can look at this thing two ways. It could be that the belle here was backwards, but on the other hand, she may have just been bent on protecting her privacy. Who really knows?

The way I heard it the census worker found the woman shelling peas on her own front porch.

After introducing himself, the census taker said, “I’m from the government, ma’am. I need to know how many children you have.”

“Four,” the woman said.

The census taker noted this on his form and asked his next question, “And may I have their names, please?”

“Sure,” the woman replied, “Eenie, Meenie, Minie and George.”

“Thank you,” said the confused census taker. “But, if you don’t mind me asking, why’d you name your fourth child George?”

The lady looked at the census taker like he was slow-witted before responding in a patient tone, “Because, sir, we didn’t want no Mo.”

Hugs,
Shellie