Navigating Regional Differences

In the Heartland people are polite. We smile and nod when passing each other, politely wait our turn in queues, quietly whisper judgmental comments to each other so the person we are discussing won't hear us and feel offended. 

When eating together, we leave the last serving for each other--which usually means for the host or hostess, once everyone has gone home, as no one cares to break this unwritten law of polite society.

These are some of the ways Heartland people behave differently from, say, 


east coasters--speaking especially of those in New York and New Jersey. What I'm going to illustrate is not meant to judge one or the other. It's just to give non-heartlanders a way of identifying us when we walk among you. Or in this case eat among you.

Not everyone is consciously aware of differences in regional habits and manners, and willing to guide newbies through navigating those differences. I was lucky to have someone who was.

A decade and a half ago I visited an acquaintance in New Jersey to attend a conference in New York where a buffet was served. It was incredibly beautiful! Three tiers of luscious delectables filled plates and bowls in a perfectly sculpted presentation. 

Several people circled the table like sharks toying with their victim, then swam out to the tables situated around the room. One thing that stood out was how fast New Yorkers moved and spoke. When they swam to their tables they left wakes in the air behind them as they moved.

Wikimedia Commons photo

My friend advised me the buffet started at 12:00 and a signal would be given to inform us we could begin filling our plates. "Don't touch the food before the bell rings or everyone will think you're rude," she said. She also suggested I locate the food I wanted before the signal, and at the signal to run to the table and dive in quickly if I wanted to eat. "Don't use your normal heartland manners," she said, "here it's everyone for themselves and if you stand back politely and wait your turn there won't be any food left by the time your turn comes around."

Could she be joking? If so she put up a good bluff. I sidled up to the table, uncomfortable with appearing too eager to eat, and surreptitiously identified one or two items. Deciding on a sandwich, thinking it would be quick and easy, I returned to our table to await the bell.  

It rang precisely at 12:00. 

The displaced air created by the horde that attacked the food in frenzied hunting and gathering sucked me along with it. I managed to grab a bun and some deli sliced beef. I reached for a pickle and brought my hand back with a missing finger tip and a fork protruding from it. Giving up, I returned to my table to eat what I had managed to grab. These people were serious about their food! And talented. 

Amazingly, parents balanced several overly full plates of food on their appendages while managing to scoop food onto plates in their hands and carried it all back to tables filled with miniature versions of themselves, without dropping more than an olive or pickle. One woman dropped a strawberry, caught it on her heel, and bounced it through the air to her husband's open mouth in a move that would have won her the golden Hackensack award had she lived in the midwest ten years earlier. She did all this carrying six plates of food and managed to sit at her table within seconds of me sitting down at mine. Incredible.

I was starving. The little I ate staved off the worst of my hunger but didn't satisfy me. 

By this time the horde was sitting at a number of tables surrounding the buffet and busily gorging itself. Sucking and chewing sounds filled the room and bits of food, that looked like raw human flesh, bounced occasionally from the tables into the air and landed on the floor. I sauntered back to the food. On the way I carefully scuffed at the debris on the floor with my shoe to search for my missing finger tip while silently praying there was something edible left on the buffet. 

Among the empty and overturned plates and bowls littering the table like hurricane debris was an olive, a strawberry and two smashed grapes. I am not ashamed to admit I grabbed them and started to shove them in my mouth when I noticed several other diners leave their tables and head in my direction, still chewing their first course.

"Back," I growled, "Mine." 

When I returned to my table my friend smiled at me. "You fit in just fine," she said.