(Originally published, in longer form, in Vermont Magazine, Fall 2002)

I met my husband Mark 11 years ago, when we became the subjects of a crude sociological experiment. I was waiting tables at a restaurant in Middlebury, Vermont, reluctant to head to Chicago or New York after graduation like most of my college classmates. He was working on the construction crew that was renovating the restaurant.

            Two of his brothers bet him that I—a college-educated flatlander—would not go out with him—a local carpenter with a mere high school diploma. To their great surprise (though perhaps not as great as Mark’s), his brothers lost $10 that day. But I don’t think they minded; in return, they’ve enjoyed watching me flounder in the alien world of Vermont.

            Young and in love, I underestimated the implications that my being a flatlander would have on my decision to marry into a Vermont family. But soon, I learned that the word “flatlander” had nothing to do with the fact that I came from the less mountainous state of Massachusetts. Flatlanders are, in simplest terms, people who may live in Vermont but were not born here. They do not talk like Vermonters. They do not think like Vermonters. And, worst of all, their fumbling attempts to act like Vermonters—by wearing carefully ironed L.L. Bean plaid shirts or misusing phrases like “Jeezum crow!”—invoke the ridicule of real Vermonters, who don’t tolerate pretension among their own and sure as hell won’t put up with it from some outsider.

            As a flatlander, I found myself charged with the seemingly impossible and opposite tasks of proving to Mark’s family that I didn’t think I was superior to them, as well as that I was good enough to become one of them.

            Looking back on our first few weeks together, I admire Mark for his fortitude as he watched me, the educated fool, blunder my way into the family’s acquaintance. I took an instant liking to their good humor and their family bond, which had been strong enough to keep all ten siblings in state, eight of them right in Addison County. They seemed to like me, too, but they regarded me as one might a pet ferret: amusing to watch but somewhat out of place in the average Vermont home.

            In other circles, I might be considered worldly. But in a family where practical skills mean much more than high SAT scores, my travels, my degree in American literature, and my years of listening to public radio indicated only that I had never learned to actually do anything. I was what his siblings referred to, with a shake of their heads, as “book smart.”

            One evening in the early weeks of our relationship, Mark and I attended a family barbecue. Between bites of hamburger and corn on the cob, Mark and his siblings got to rehashing old family stories, including my favorite: the infamous firecracker debate.

Which of the siblings, lo these many years ago, had lit that firecracker? In any case, the entire brood had watched it roll through the crack beneath the door of the bathroom, where their mother sat on the toilet. They had lain with their cheeks pressed to the hall floor, jockeying for the best view of the incendiary as it came to a stop between their mother’s feet. Before she had time to process what the sputtering object was, it had exploded.

            From their vantage point, the children could not see the expression on their mother’s face. They could only hear her whooping and note that her feet came off the floor for what seemed like minutes. As Mark explained, “We did some scrapping to get downstairs when she finally touched down and come flying out of that bathroom.”

            Soon talk turned to good times spent fishing in Weybridge, where “the fair dumps into the crick.” (Crick? Had I teleported into an episode of “The Waltons?”)

            I asked Mark what a “fair” was.

            “The Fair,” he said, “is the Lemon Fair River. We used to fish at the spot where the Fair flows into Otter Creek.”

            I wanted to join the conversation and share my own childhood memories. But I hadn’t ever been to that fishing spot. In fact, I hadn’t ever gone fishing. All I could think of was to relate a blurb I had read in a local newspaper.

            “Did you know,” I said to the group, “that some scholars believe that the name ‘Lemon Fair’ is actually a bastardization of the French term ‘les monts verts,’ referring, of course, to the Green Mountains?”

            In the silence that followed, I knew how a chickadee feels when it flies into a plate glass window. Mark closed his eyes. Amid the snorts and giggles I heard murmurs of “Yep, she’s a flatlander all right,” and “Did she just call someone a bastard?”

            Finally, one of Mark’s brothers stifled a grin and said, “I take it you don’t fish.”

            I suddenly realized that I was not going to blend in as easily as I had expected.

I envied Mark for his position of safety on his home turf while I agonized over my every move, such as whether bringing couscous to a potluck would label me a snob. He would never need to know how to negotiate the social situations that come up in more formal places than Vermont. All he had to do was hope I didn’t embarrass him by using words like “extrapolate” or “rhetorical” in casual conversation.

            I quickly found that I should not only give up on trying fit in, I should stop apologizing for my flatlander heritage. Sure, my in-laws will always rib me for carrying a wildflower guide with me when we go on family hikes. They will wonder why I bother to make spaghetti sauce from scratch (with real garlic, no less) when it is available right from the jar. And they will shake their heads at my flatlander affectations, such as calling ahead before I stop in for a visit.

            But as I have grown closer to Mark’s family, I’ve come to understand that they tease me not because they resent me for being a flatlander, but because they like me in spite of it; they know I can’t help it. And I have to admit that my lack of hands-on skills does make me poorly suited to many aspects of Vermont life. I was not raised in a world where I had to fend for myself. Yes, I went to college in Vermont. But that didn’t prepare me to live here.

            Mark and his brothers, three of them builders, love to remind me of how little help my diploma is now. Whenever a discussion arises over, for example, the best way to lay the rafters on a complicated roof project, they love to say, “Ask Jessie. She graduated from Middlebury College!” And then they all laugh.

            No one disputes that I am smart. It’s just that the poetry I can recite, the historical facts I’ve committed to memory, and the current events that I can’t help discussing generally hold little interest for this family, who value more tangible qualities, such as being able to back a dump wagon down a steep driveway in the winter.

            Over time, I have become proficient in some Vermont basics. I carry jumper cables in my trunk and I’m not afraid to use them. I can roast a wild turkey to the delicate point where it is cooked but not dry. I can start a fire in a woodstove and keep it going all night.

            I think now, having spent 17 years in this state, I know enough about Vermonters to know that I will never qualify as one. But I have found my place here, in our old farmhouse, with a real Vermonter willing to put up with my flatlander shortcomings. I’m grateful to Mark’s family for letting me enjoy an imaginary Vermont childhood through their memories, for teaching me about the power of a close-knit family, and, most of all, for making a long-shot $10 bet against the flatlander college grad and the simple Vermont carpenter.

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