Bless your heart, with all due respect

Although my ethnic heritage is best described as thirty-one flavors, I tend to wear my Italian legacy like the badge of honor that it is. I’m sure it has something to do with my rather obvious last name, and the fact that my very charismatic father could trace the roots of his entire family tree to The Boot. Add to it the colorful traditions, the over-the-top hip factor of fellow Italian-Americans like DiMaggio and Sinatra, and the first two Godfather movies, and really, wouldn’t you like to be an Italian too? That I’ve been told I look “as Irish as Patty’s pig” – is immaterial.

It wasn’t until I moved to the south that I wondered if waving the red, white and green flag might be a bad idea. Sure, everyone loves the image of Tuscany and its rolling hills and excellent wine. But when I serve lasagna as a first course at Thanksgiving, and pepperoni stuffing as a side dish, would people be aghast? When I bring a plate of cannolis and hard-as-nails biscotti to a PTA pot luck, will eyebrows raise?

What I have discovered during my eleven-month tenure is that southerners and Americans of Italian descent share more in common than we realize. For one, we all enjoy a good vowel; those little letters that make our words sound more lyrical, dancing to a rhythmic beat as they separate the more awkward consonants, are in full employ in both cultures. Whereas Italians tend to dangle ours off the end of words, even where they don’t belong, southerners add them into the body of a word, particularly where they don’t belong. If you haven’t seen Paula Deen on The Food Network pronounce ‘10’ as something with multiple syllables, you’re missing vowel enhancement at its finest.

And speaking of food, let’s just put it out there: southerners and Italians share a love of food, and agree to its value as a cure all to everything from hangovers to heart ache. When Vinny Goombatz in Brooklyn, NY can’t sleep off the night before because his Ma is yelling at him to get ready for Mass, he sits down to a breakfast so big it’s served on a platter. Similarly, when Jimmy Lee Jackson can’t find a date to the prom, his mama fixes him a heaping helping of shrimp-n-grits that he washes down with tea so sweet he can’t help but smile. Both groups go one step too far, unfortunately, in that neither is afraid to make a meal out of something clearly less than palatable. Since my arrival in North Carolina, I have seen more than one old-fashioned delivery truck willing to bring something called liver mush to your door. For the Italian version of gross, I give you: tripe.

Our most subtle and yet endearing commonality is the manner with which we speak of others with impunity. Italian-Americans can lay the hammer on you, your kids, your wife and maybe even your mother, if they preface it with the ever purposeful, “with all due respect”. While at the bar the night before, Vinny Goombatz barely avoided a brawl when he said, “Your girlfriend is so ugly, she makes the onion cry…with all due respect.” Truly Italian in style, with all due respect is both pragmatic and inventive; it calms all fears and pacifies all injuries by laying on just the right level of insincere sentiment in a seemingly sincere fashion. It’s hard to argue with that kind of hypocrisy.

When I learned that southerners had their own version of WADR, I started to feel at home. Southerners get away with every kind of awful insult as long as they add, “bless his/her/your heart.” Jimmy Lee Jackson’s own mother described his dating dilemma by saying, “He’s got no job, his car’s on blocks, and he’s dumber than a box of rocks, bless his heart.” You can wail on a neighbor, complain about a daughter-in-law or give the person you a talking to the figurative finger, all in a gentile fashion, if bless your heart is part of the statement. Fabulous stuff!

Of course, my novice southern status prevents me from attempting bless your heart in public. I imagine the book club meeting, where, after one too many glasses of pinot noir, I say something like, “This author’s prose is as dry as a North Carolina flower bed in a drought, bless his due respect.” I am going to have to travel further past my own mental Mason-Dixon line before my comfort level warrants a real try, but when I do so, it will be “with all my heart”. Due respect, intended.