Am I just a Massachusetts guy living in Connecticut?

It’s been mentioned on a couple podcasts recently that folks from Massachusetts – and specifically the Boston area – possess a certain degree of edginess and readiness to fight. Perhaps an undercurrent of impatience and even rage.

“Maybe,” I thought after listening to these podcasts, “I’m not as confrontational as I thought. Maybe I’m just a guy who grew up in Massachusetts but is now living his life in Connecticut. Maybe I would fit like like a glove in Boston.”

There is some possible evidence to support this theory.

When I first came to Connecticut back in 1994, I was invited to play in a flag football game. At the end of the game, I was officially uninvited from all subsequent flag football games. When I asked why, I was told I played “too rough.”

I wanted to punch the guy in the head and show him what playing rough really looked like.

So maybe there is something to this Massachusetts-Connecticut thing. Maybe I’m just built for a different state.

So I asked Elysha about it. “Maybe I’m not as confrontational as I thought. Maybe I’m just misplaced.”

“No,” she said immediately. “It’s not that. You’re confrontational. You like confrontation.”

I suggested that she had perhaps answered my question a little too quickly and had not considered the possibility.

“No,” she said again, with authority. “Not one bit. It’s you. All you.”

I’m not sure if I was pleased to hear the certainty of her opinion, but I’ve always found it comforting to know that Elysha seems to know me as well as she does.

Or at least as well as she thinks she does…