Comments by "Aristocles Athenaioi" (@aristoclesathenaioi4939) on "CULTURAL SHOCK or returning to Russia after the US / Why Russians don't smile?" video.

@jaspertanner3463 My family is from Alabama although I grew up in Western NY, and the comment is dead-on. However, I would add this to the comment, "Folks in the South will not only tell you their life story, but they will also ask you to sit down so they can. However, they will want to know yours. These is a reason for it. People in the South attach get significance to who your ancestors are, what family you come from. Therefore, knowing someone's life story establishes where they are in the social order. In my case, my mother always insisted that we were descended from the indentured servants and petty criminals sent to the Oglethorpe Colony in Georgia. We have family throughout Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. On one occasion when I visited Australia, I was staying in a hotel on Botany Bay where the first prison ships landed. The monument list everyone one the ships, and the convicts have dot in front of their name. My family appeared as a British sailor, a guard and a convict. So we had all the bases covered. It was reassuring to know that a generation after my ancestors were sent to a penal colony in the American Colonials that when the British could no longer send their convicts to North America, but now had to send them to Australia that my family had continued their thieving ways. I told that story to a fellow in Atlanta who shared my family name, and it visibly disturbed him. I always felt the being descended from the criminal classes put me in the mainstream of culture in the US. Now you see, I have now told you my family history. :)
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