Good. I’ll leave my kids there.

I love the yarn. The colors are amazing.

This is Geoffrey from the Outer Banks. It was so nice to see all of you again this year and we of course hope to see y’all here again next year. The thing you quickly find out about people you meet while vacationing on the Outer Banks is that you will become fast friends with them (must be something in the salt air) and they will continue to pop into your life in various, often surprising ways, or at least that has been my experience. Even if it is only from summer to summer that’s somehow enough because there’s something about this magical place that binds people unlike anywhere else I’ve been.

I want to make sure that we have your e-mail address correctly. Mine should be viewable to you as I had to include it to post a reply. Please just shoot me an e-mail when you get a chance and I’ll be sure to save your contact and pass it along to my mother, the Queen S.L.U.T. Herself; I’m sure she could make you an honorary Southern Lady Under Tremendous Stress, should you so desire, haha.

And yes, it is appreciated when we hear y’all “Yankees” (from my family that term is used completely playfully and with fondness, not so with all Southerners, unfortunately) trying to use “y’all.” However, much like Frenchmen can tell non-native speakers from natives we can tell when our words don’t slide as easily or with the same cadence or twang off the tongues of “foreigners.” Don’t know if it’s common up north but double contractions (such as “wouldn’t've,” “shouldn’t've,” “hadn’t've”… ooh, and on a side-not, the wonderfully useful “widjadidja” (see the Urban Dictionary’s definition if you’re not familiar)) are a must-have in the South; incorporate any of these into your vocabulary when mixing with locals and you’ll be well on your way to fluency in a whole new kind of English!

Again, it was great to see you and please keep in touch.

–G

PS

Judy and Jake tell me to look into Tufts for graduate school in International Studies and that it is near to where you live… I’ll definitely give it a look if for no other reason than that I hear the Boston area has quite possibly the perfect “college-town” atmosphere, which is hard to imagine after the jewel that is Chapel Hill.

Knit on….

I have an identical ball of Tofutsies sitting in the basket on my desk waiting for inspiration. I am anxious to see what you do with yours.

Enjoy the holiday and the margarita.

But you know, I actually thought the “selling children into slavery” sign referenced an era when children used to be swept up off the streets of, say, London and sent to the colonies to work. Usually for nothing and usually more or less to death.

Perhaps I’m being too academic and I should be more offended. I’ll contemplate that.