This morning my husband and I had a little extra time, so we decided to go to our favorite breakfast place. The one with faux sausage and organic eggnog lattes. They were closed. So we went to a down-home Southern cooking kind of place instead. We live in the South.

The restaurant was nestled in a shopping center with a Laundromat, an online gambling parlor (I totally thought those were illegal here), a thrift store, a dollar store and a Subway. We walked in and stood conspicuously, blocking the door. Were we supposed to seat ourselves? Would the hostess seat us? If we waited to find out, would there be any tables left? So we sat down at a relatively clean table graced with a dollar bill. Nice tip, I thought, real nice.

Feeling uncomfortable, my husband and I began joking about gender roles. He imagined what would happen if he stood up and yelled “Meat, by God!,” and I wondered out loud what I would yell in a restaurant that would be stereotypically female. “How about, ‘where’s my spatula?’” he suggested. I laughed – in our house, he does all the cooking. Mostly because he’s a trained chef and I’m a terrible cook. We were so out of place.

The atmosphere was chaotic, to put it mildly. Servers were jogging between tables, sliding plates like Frisbees and continuing their sprint toward the kitchen. Everyone was talking too loud. I opened the menu. Featured prominently was a photograph of a fried chicken and waffle dish. Most of the menu photographs were of fried meat or giant slabs of unfried meat. I already knew I would order some variety of pancakes. Pecan pancakes, I decided. Suddenly nervous, I whispered to my husband, “will the waitress understand me if I don’t ask for pee-can pancakes?” Having lived a third of my life in the South, I still feel like I have YANKEE branded on my forehead. He shrugged. I asked for p’kahn pancakes, and the communication was successful, though I had properly identified myself as an outsider.

You’d think I’d be used to all this by now. I’m still not. I move through semi-professional and academic circles. My kid’s going to a magnet school for the arts next year. I have prominent tattoos and shop at Whole Foods (when I can afford it – so not very much). I don’t fit in traditional Southern culture, and I never will. Which is fine with me, but it also turns basic breakfast trips into full-blown sociological adventures. When the waitress returned with our food, a woman at the next table over grabbed her arm and shoved a plate of toast at her. “I asked for biscuits,” she said, plucked eyebrows drawn crossly on her pudgy face. She looked like Missi Pyle in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” pink track suit and all. The server rolled her eyes and told the toast woman to wait a minute. Had it been me, I would have Frisbeed the toast back onto her table and walked away. But, I probably didn’t need the tip as badly as she did.

This got me watching the table next to us. They were an antsy sort of family. Except for Grandma, whose pendulous breasts swung a bit, nudging the table; she was in a wheelchair. The others appeared to be her daughter and three of her daughter’s kids, all under the age of six. The children were truly adorable. I don’t ever use the word “adorable,” so take that for what it is. The dark-haired girl, maybe 3 years old, looked like a sweet little munchkin and was seated next to her grumpy, somewhat overweight mom. When the girl reached behind her neck to fiddle with the tag on her shirt – an endearing thing my own daughter does – Mom proceeded to slap her repeatedly. At another point during the meal when I looked over (I couldn’t stop watching them), Grandma smacked the little girl sitting next to her. Only the boy seemed to go unscathed. I looked to see what the kids were eating. All of them had fried chicken and French fries. For breakfast. When they were finished, Mom put some quarters in the candy machines and gave some to each kid.

Here I was, worrying about whether to say pee-can or p’kahn, and I couldn’t reconcile my place in the universe with that of a family one table over. I didn’t feel a gulf like this in Europe. How is it I fell in a few miles from my house? It’s a stretch to call this morning’s breakfast an “adventure,” but I did step outside my ordinary cultural boundaries and into an uncomfortable place. All I wanted was p’kahn pancakes and coffee. I really wasn’t in the mood for early-morning sociological observations.

As we pulled out of the torn-up parking lot, passing the newspaper hawkers standing in the middle of traffic, I asked my husband for some ideas of what to write about today. “Write about this,” he said. For a guy raised in the South, he has an amazing ability to weave in and out of Southerness, effortlessly. I don’t have it and I never will. This is alienating.

This exact same scene played out in the restaurant could have easily happened up North, on my territory. But it didn’t, and it threw me off. I seek out places and people I identify with so I don’t have to deal with my complete lack of belonging. And I’m sorry to say that I prefer it this way. It’s been a long ten years below the Mason-Dixon line, but I’m not sure I’ve learned much from it (except that the Civil War was fought over more than just slavery). I’ve developed a little twang in my speech, and I’m ok with that. But when and if I do leave for another region, the minuscule bit of Southerness I’ve absorbed will probably die here. Sometimes living as an outsider is easier than trying to blend in.

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