Southern Culture. A Term I Use Loosely.

This week's episode of How Weird is the Life of Macaronimaniac features someone named Sister. 

Who is not my sibling. 

Nor is she a nun.

She's from that kind of Southern family a mutual friend explained to me in which the eldest daughter is called "Sister" and the eldest son is called "Brother."

Is that the same kind of Southern family I asked in which Sister and Brother end up marrying each other?

I know that's a tasteless joke. Nothing but a narrow-minded, carpet-bagging, Northern aggressioning stereotype of fine Southern culture.

Except that Sister did marry a brother.

Although not her own.  

Nor a monk.

She married the brother of my friends Little Joey Smallwood and Susie Sustainability.  In other words, Sister is their sister-in-law.

In addition to not being from the type of Southern family in which siblings marry, Sister is apparently not from the kind of Southern family in which every knows how to line dance.  And lucky for me she isn't, because that's how I met Sister . . . when Sister and her sister-in-law Susan decided to invite several dozen of their closest lady friends, including Sister's mother-in-law, over to learn line dancing.

Among other things.

Where can we go line dancing? one of the ladies excitedly asked, as we threw back some lemonade mojitos in between Boot Scootin' Boogies.

Michelle, our fearless teacher of all things line danceable, quickly gave us a rundown of local venues, clueing us in on which had the best dance floor, and which is better known for a certain mating ritual called . . . well, let's just say it shares the second two initials of certain Southern president, although it references an activity more recently associated with a different Southern president.

And here I do not mean Jimmy Carter and the WB.

 

Suffice it to say, it is the sort of alcohol-fueled activity you don't want to have to hear described in mixed company.  

And by mixed I mean, in the presence of Sister's seventy-something mother-in-law.

This is not one of my usual photoshop mash-ups.

It happens that the only picture of have of Sister's mother-in-law is one in which she is wearing a clown nose.

Needless to say, given the clown nose, this picture was not taken while we were line dancing.  

It was taken while we were at a Korean banquet in Elmhurst, New York.  But surely you could have guess that, right?

Anyway, we did learn some line dancing.  I can now Electric Slide.  And Cotton-Eyed Joe. Not to mention Watermelon Slide.  And of course, as aforementioned, Boot Scootin' Boogie. 

Or at least I could, as of last Tuesday.  I think I might have forgotten entirely by now.  Good thing I have this footage.  Or bootage, I guess it is.

Tthat was so much fun, let's see another!

Who gets to make up the moves for each song-dance combination? I wondered.

It's done by a committee of Southern ladies my friend Rachel surmised when they aren't otherwise occupied planning toddler pageants.

It's a weird way to spend your time.  But I guess it beats marrying your own brother.