suspension of the Kappa Sigs for a whole year?
No? Neither did any of the managing editors in New York.
I started waiting tables to make rent and blogging to help process my transition to life in the big city. As a title, Georgia Peach in the Big Apple was a little misleading but I figured that my attending the University of Georgia made it true enough. Besides, it wasn’t like I thought anybody was actually going to read it.
But for some reason, they did. Georgia Peach wasn’t as popular as a lot of blogs; I never got a TV show or movie or book deal out of it, but I did develop a sort of cult following, mostly because of the comments.
If you’re raised in the South, certain things are baked into you from birth. You say, “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am.” You respect your elders. Back then when someone wrote to you, you wrote back, on proper stationery and in your very nicest handwriting, unless you were Calpurnia, who had shockingly poor penmanship for a woman of her era and got away with tapping out her correspondence on her trusty Olivetti typewriter with the wonky y, always sending some sugar when she signed off. The rest of us were supposed to pen our thanks by hand; this and many other rules of etiquette were pounded into me from an early age. I received my first set of monogrammed stationery for my fourth birthday, long before I actually could write. So, of course, I read and answered all those comments personally and at length. It would have been rude not to, especially for a blogger who was tapping into her southern sensibility.
Before long, people started posting questions as well as comments, often asking for my advice. Why they thought I’d have any special insights to offer still baffles me but I always wrote back. That’s when I started using the pen name Calpurnia and developed my signature sign-off, “Sending you some sugar.” Doesn’t get a lot more southern than that.
By the time Dan McKee found me, the blog was making a little money, so I turned down his initial “donuts and a byline” proposal. I was surprised when he came back with an offer of thirty-five thousand a year. It seemed an enormous sum at the time. I’ve gotten a few raises since, all hard fought. Last time, I threatened to take the column to another publication. It was a bluff that paid off. Dan made me sign a three-year contract that included a noncompete and a substantial raise.
That was a tough negotiation. I wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience. So when I got to the office and found that Dan wasn’t in, I was disappointed but also a little relieved.
After settling down at my desk, I opened my email. Dozens of messages for Dear Calpurnia popped up. It seems like writing an advice column should be the easiest job in journalism but it’s not, and when you’ve been doing it for as long as I have, avoiding repetition is hard. Lately, I feel like I’ve been recycling myself a lot. After twelve years as Calpurnia, what fresh insights do I really have to offer?
Though only a couple of the emails that come in will appear in Daily McKee, I respond to everybody who writes to me. This isn’t a job requirement, only a personal one. Like I said, somebody has to care about these people. Most of my responses boil down to three vital nuggets of advice. Nobody is perfect, even you, so don’t be so hard on other people. Nobody is perfect, and that’s okay, so don’t be so hard on yourself. And nobody is perfect, especially you, so why don’t you look in the mirror and quit being such a jerk.
But I say it more sympathetically.
Reading between the lines, figuring out the stuff that people aren’t saying and might not know about themselves is the tricky part of my job. But you’ve got to be gentle. People can’t hear you if they’re feeling attacked or judged. That’s part of the reason I sprinkle my letters with little endearments—baby girl, buttercup, and the like. It helps people know that I still like them, even when I’m delivering a much-needed lecture. Also, it’s just my style.
After reading through the day’s batch of mail, I decided to publish a letter from a widow who had moved in with her son, daughter-in-law, and three teenage grandchildren, and was very, very unhappy.