After watching Survivor’s umpteenth episode on television the other night, it occurs to us that if these folks think they are survivors, they ought to live in the South where surviving is more than a game, it’s a way of life.

Diving in the ocean for sake bottles?  Don’t get me started!  Good ol’ boys were diving into the 10 foot deep swimming hole almost before they could swim.  There were not any sake bottles there, but we might find a few longneck beer bottles if anybody is stupid enough to want to look for them.

Survival? Try taking a short cut across the back lot behind ol’ Mr. Jones’ house if you really want to be a survivor.  You will learn to survive really fast to when being chased by his ornery old pit bull.  And if the pit bull doesn’t teach you anything, chances are Mr. Jones’ buckshot will.  Try surviving that!

Southern rednecks knew about survival long before it became a reality television show.  Survival wasn’t a game to us, it was a way of staying alive.  We’ve suffered though poverty and hardship for a hundred years – not to mention chicken floggings, outhouses, barbwire, and cow pies.

Down here we don’t expel anybody from our clan, except maybe a few politicians, which we send up to Washington.  But they ask for that.  They usually don’t stay long enough for anything except a couple of filibusters until they come back home.

We’ve also learned to survive Yankee’s that move down here because they think the climate is better. Funny how the first thing someone from the North does when they move down South is try and change us to be like them. You’d think as much fun as they make of us, they’d want to stay up yonder where they belong.

In the South, we don’t get any immunity from anything, especially hard work, no matter how many votes are in our clan.  It’s just as well since we don’t have any shark jaw necklaces, or whatever that thing is, to wear like they do on TV.  Guess we could hang grandpa’s false teeth around our neck.  Of course, we’d have to explain it to grandpa first.

If we wanted to play games, we could use bandannas to identify teams.  They come in both red and blue, you know. But, they are just big handkerchiefs to us, We mostly use them for working and sweating.  We don’t have anything fancy to sell with a redneck logo on it like they do.

Looking for food to survive would be easy.  We are used to hunting, fishing, eating wild greens and berries, and other unusual food.  It’s just a part of our heritage. We figured out surviving by living off the land a long time ago.  We can even eat kudzu if we have to.

Nobody gets a million bucks for surviving as a Southerner.  The most we usually get is a chance to continue surviving.  We don’t have much time for playing mental games or planning strategies to outwit each other.  Just trying to work and make a living is challenge enough.

We have learned to take it slow and easy and to cooperate with each other instead of competing. We have a lot of good music, good neighbors, and good fun. If someone else strikes it rich, maybe they can loan us a few bucks to buy gas for the truck until payday.

So, that’s the Southern take on this Survivor stuff. Thanks goodness real life isn’t reality television! We see enough of folks trying to outsmart and outwit their neighbors. Most likely we will just stick to watching shows that make sense and let other folks figure out Survivor.