When I meet new people and tell them I’m from Georgia, the conversation typically goes one of two ways, either, “Oh, you must be from Atlanta!” or “Oh, did you go to UGA?” When I respond with, “no, actually, I’m from Macon” I’m almost always met with looks of bewildered confusion, which inevitably leads me to hitting them with unsolicited Macon trivia facts like “It’s where Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers are from” or cracking the “It’s 85 miles and 100 years south of Atlanta” joke.

Growing up in Macon, I didn’t always have the greatest appreciation for my quirky little southern hometown, and weirdly prided myself on the fact that I wasn’t “from” Macon, but was technically “from” my mother’s hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut. To clarify, my family moved to Macon a year and a half after I was born, so there’s really no escaping the fact that it is my hometown, despite the birth certificate technicality I clung so desperately to when I was younger. While I would love nothing more than to be able to travel back in time, look my teen self in the eye, and say something along the lines of “You sound like a pretentious little snot and I could provide you with a list of hundreds of worse places to live. Also, you definitely should’ve sized up to a large in that Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt, and for the love of God, get that piece of Dorito out of your braces.”

I don’t think I was completely alone in feeling the way I did. It’s really easy when you’re younger (and even when you’re older) to point out all the negatives about the place you grew up like I did, to talk about how boring it is, to talk about how you can’t wait to leave, etc. What’s harder is to come to terms with the fact that for all its quirks and flaws, your little hometown has, unbeknownst to you, prepared you to succeed in other places outside of it.

I moved to the northeast in the summer of 2013 for what was supposed to be a three month Public Relations internship. But that turned into another internship, which turned into another, which turned into a job, which turned into an unexpected permanent move above the Mason Dixon Line. While I had grown up making regular trips to visit family in New York and Connecticut, I quickly learned that living here was a completely different ball game. Despite my best efforts, there were certain southern practices that were so deeply ingrained in me that it was definitely going to be quite an adjustment.

Let me go ahead and squash the misconception that people from the Northeast are unfriendly, because it’s absolutely not true. They may give off that kind of vibe because they don’t walk around with smiles plastered on their faces, but neither do I, which, unfortunately coupled with several (most) of my other personality traits pretty much guarantees I’ll never fulfill my elementary school goal of growing up to be a Stepford Wife, but I’ve learned that a seemingly unpleasant resting face does not an unpleasant person make. That being said, one of the biggest adjustments for me, someone who already has a tendency to hurt themselves by tripping over things like, well, nothing, is that people don’t hold doors like they do at home. Growing up in the south, I always held the door for someone coming in or out before or after me, and vice versa, but I’ve learned the hard (somewhat painful) way that if you expect someone to hold a door, there’s a good chance you’ll be met with cold glass, but there’s an even better chance that if you keep up that practice when you move somewhere else, you’ll unexpectedly make someone’s day.

Growing up, my parents never really freaked out if we didn’t say “yes/no ma’am” or “yes/no sir” unless we were addressing someone considerably older. But I’ve found it goes a long way when you move somewhere else, particularly outside the South. I’m not joking when I say that I thought a woman I addressed at a work function with “yes ma’am” was going to keel over and die from shock and awe (in a good way, I think). The point is, I learned not to be so critical of little ol’ Macon as I got older, because I realized that it had shaped me and given me good habits that would prevent me from becoming one of those insufferable millennial nightmares you read about on Buzzfeed.

Manners aside, I’ve found that a lot of other quirky things about Macon that I grew up experiencing have shaped me into who I am today. The ballet lessons I took at Dance Arts Studio (because it’s just what girls my age in Macon did) were not just a feeble attempt by my parent’s to give me a fighting chance at having normal coordination and fine motor skills. The classes taught me to stick with commitments and follow through, no matter how embarrassingly, painfully terrible I was at them.

Dance League (AKA Cotillion) taught me that if I, a chubby, awkward twelve year old with bangs starting at the crown of my head and ending exactly one millimeter above my eyebrows could somehow make it through weekly ballroom dance lessons with boys, that I could more than likely survive most future awkward social situations.  Also, should I ever be faced with a life or death dance battle, I can cha-cha, waltz or foxtrot my way to victory! Contrary to what we Maconites think most young people have never done this.

This next part is somewhat painful for teenage me to admit, but, when you leave Macon, you will miss it, maybe not all of it, but definitely parts of it. There came a point after I was in New York working where I hadn’t been home to visit in almost a year. At that point I would have given a kidney or other vital (-ish) organ for a meal from H&H, or to go hang out on the patio at The Hummingbird. Luckily I was able to find deep fried solace at Red Rooster in Harlem, and dive bar salvation at Dorrian’s Red Hand on the Upper East Side, but it still isn’t quite the same.

There’s nothing wrong with growing up and leaving the nest, in fact, I think it’s probably the nicest thing I’ve ever done or will ever do for my parents, but I’ve learned that every so often, you should throw the place that spawned you a little love, whether you’re still there or have moved far away, because you wouldn’t be you without it. This is normally where I’d end on some sort of cliché like “you can take the girl out of Macon but you can’t take the Macon out of the girl” but instead, I’ll just say, I love ya Macon, from your beautiful architecture and rich music history, all the way down to your innuendo inspired sport’s team names.