Soaked In By The Sun?

I've been pondering to myself what it is that makes the West so different than the East?  It's very hard to put into words.  It's a feeling.  I've noticed while I have been here that whenever I run into an East Coaster, they know right away I am from the East Coast and they immediately gravitate towards me and I to them.  It is a magnetic pull.  It cannot be helped.  

I will give you some examples.  Every morning when I drop my daughter off at her elementary school, I am eagerly greeted by a fellow New Jerseyian.  My New Jersey neighbor back from home with the baseball cap who I never knew.  I am so happy that I still have my Jersey license plates on my car because of this friendliest greeting I am so privileged to get from the man in the baseball cap on the days he sees my car and greets me:  "hey, Jersey!"  It's as if we are in a foreign country and don't speak the language and we have found another American who speaks English!  And to top it off, he's really from my region.  He's from Bergen County, NJ.  Northern NJ.  The Gold Coast of NJ.  You can't get closer than that!  It's like kind of being from the same village.

Next example also comes from my daughter's elementary school.  This one is from the loveliest woman who runs the Homework Club at her school.  Yes.  They actually have a "Homework Club" at the elementary school here.  You have to love it.  Of course, "it costs money because it saves money."  Sorry.  I had to give an Ode to one of my favorite movies, Moonstruck, to which many people out here have not seen!  Either because it takes place in Brooklyn and NYC or because I'm getting old:(  It's getting sad when these movies are getting to be called "classics."  Classics to me are Casablanca and Rebecca.  Anyway, going off topic.  So back on the Homework Club ("HC").  I sign up my daughter for one session a week of HC to leave that one day during the week which we don't scream at each other.  As I am signing her up, HC woman (we will call her), notices my accent, (which I don't really think I have that much of a Jersey accent, but whatevah!) and she asks where I am from and she bursts out telling me she's from Brooklyn and next thing you know we are hugging it out!  I'm serious!  I ask her when she left Brooklyn and she tells me when she was 12!  Again, I'm serious!  Yet, she still considers herself from the East Coast.  She tells me that it's just in her and she would go visit her father back home whenever she could and Brooklyn always felt like home to her, even though she's been living in LA for over four decades at least.  We kept trying to discuss what it is about the people back home and it was so hard to put into words and that was exactly what it was.  One could not put it into words.  It was just a feeling.  A feeling.  That's what it is:  a feeling.