Jaime Primak Sullivan - The Southern Education of a Jersey Girl: Adventures in Life and Love in the Heart of Dixie

Touchstone

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Copyright 2016 by Jaime Primak Sullivan

Certain names have been changed, whether or not so noted in the text.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone hardcover edition August 2016

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Interior design by Jill Putorti

Jacket Design and Illustration by Jonathan Bush

Lip art Shutterstock

Jacket photograph: wood frame ANTPKR/iStock/Getty Images Plus, magnolia blossoms Bruno Crecia Photography/First Light/Getty Images, glass jar Ian Oleary/Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images, spine Piotr Zajc/Shutterstock Images, chalk board Lucie Lang/Shutterstock Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sullivan, Jaime Primak, author. | Adamson, Eve, co-author.

Title: The Southern education of a Jersey girl : adventures in life and love in the heart of Dixie / Jaime Primak Sullivan with Eve Adamson.

Description: New York : Touchstone, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015050489 (print) | LCCN 2016016389 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781501115370 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501115479 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sullivan, Jaime Primak. | Sullivan, Jaime PrimakMarriage. |

Young womenAlabamaBirminghamBiography. | Birmingham (Ala.)Social life and customs. | WomenSouthern StatesSocial life and customs. |

Southern StatesSocial life and customs. | Birmingham (Ala.)Biography. |

New JerseyBiography. | Television personalitiesUnited StatesBiography. |

Public relationsUnited StatesBiography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Love & Romance. | PERFORMING ARTS / Television / General.

Classification: LCC F334.B653 S85 2016 (print) | LCC F334.B653 (ebook) |

DDC 791.45092 [B] dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015050489

ISBN 978-1-5011-1537-0

ISBN 978-1-5011-1547-9 (ebook)

For real women everywhere.

[Yankees] are pretty much like southerners except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents.

MARGARET MITCHELL, GONE WITH THE WIND

Manners involve the appearance of things, rather than the total reality.

MISS MANNERS GUIDE TO EXCRUCIATINGLY CORRECT BEHAVIOR

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Note: In this book, I make some assumptions and generalizations about both the North and the South. I do this with the full realization that generalizations are not always true. The North isnt all like Jersey my Jersey isnt even all like Jersey. Just as the South isnt all like Alabama, and my Alabama isnt like all of Alabama. This book is about my experience, and contains my personal observations. I hope no one will take offense. None is intended.

I hear Thursdays going to be bad in New York, my assistant told me. I hope you can make your flight.

What, it might snow? I said, rolling my eyes. Im not afraid of a little snow.

Living in Alabama, I encounter a lot of snow-ignorance. People in the South think snow is some kind of natural disaster. The mere mention of the word and everybody panics. Should we actually see a flurry? Cars slide off the roads. School gets canceled. Dont waste your time at the Piggly Wiggly; you can all but forget about bread and milk. Im from Jersey, so I think this is a little ridiculous. Snow is no big deal. When you grow up with it, you learn how to love it.

But all that week, people kept mentioning it, or pulling up the weather maps on their phones. Ugh, look at this weather moving in. Theres no way youre going to get into New York on Thursday.

Oh, come on, I said, over and over. Ive seen this a million times. Its nothing. A week out, they say eight inches of snow, and then its five, and then its three inches, and then you barely get a dusting. Besides, its New York. I think they know how to handle a little cold weather, I concluded, implying to my overreactive southern friends that they, by contrast, did not.

But the day before I was scheduled to leave, I got an email that my flight was canceled. Come on, are you kidding me? I called Delta and I waited forty-seven minutes on hold. When I finally got a human being, I was Yankee-insistent. I had no time for manners.

My flight was canceled and I need to get to New York. I have two scheduled appearances. I do not have the option of a no-show.

The weather in New York is supposed to be really bad, the sympathetic Delta rep said with a warm southern accent. Right now, we only have two flights still scheduled to go out of Atlanta. So much for my convenient nonstop flight, but Birmingham to Atlanta to New York was better than missing the Jersey Cawfeetawk event five months in the making. I heard the tapping of computer keys. It looks like weve already rebooked you on the later of the last two flights going out, he said.

No. Put me on the earlier one. If the weathers really supposed to be as bad as they say, that later flights not getting out.

I can keep you in first class. Youll be in the first seat on the left-hand side of the plane, he said.

Perfect.

Little did I know that seat would turn out to be the scariest seat in the house.

That morning, having already endured a cancellation, a rebooking, and a re-rebooking, I was on my way to the airport at five thirty AM when I got a call from the kids school: closed in anticipation of the approaching inclement weather. I never leave town when they close school, but I was hell-bound for New York and I couldnt change my plans now. I called my husband, Michael.

Babe, schools canceled.

All right. I wont go to Montgomery. Ill stay in Birmingham. My husband is a lobbyist, and he just happened to have a flexible schedule that day.

At the airport at last, I breathed a sigh of relief. Home and family secured, I was back to work. Only I wasnt. As I approached the security line, I realized Id forgotten my drivers license. In all my years of flying, Ive never forgotten my license. I was beginning to think something was trying to keep me in Alabama. I went through some rigorous security checks, but because they seemed to know me from TV or because I travel so often, they let me through.

When I got to the gate, I asked the gate agent, Is my connection in Atlanta still on time?

As of now it is, but the weather in New York doesnt look good.

So Ive heard, I mumbled.

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful. I hadnt sat to shoot my Cawfeetawk video for the day yet, so I recorded it in the Atlanta airport. Every morning, I sit down with my cup of coffee and my iPhone and talk about something thats been on my mind. I decided to share my thoughts on how to say a proper good-bye to someone whos dying. I talked about my experience with my dad, and what I wish I had done differently when he died.