I don't know if I've inundated any of you with my undying love for and of Seattle. I have it. My grandmother was raised in Ballard, she graduated from the University of Washington. My family has a very long history in Seattle, Gram's mom came from Norway to Seattle, I know, I know, that is the typical story of the northwest immigrant in the 1880's and 90's.

There are certain stereotypes of Seattlelites, in fact my favorite now defunct column from the Weekly was called Uptight Seattlelite. It was one of those laugh out loud columns and all about Seattlelite Stereotypes, which were all kind of true and hilarious! We are an odd group group of people, it isn't as if we don't know that, we mostly don't care.

Here is a little anecdote that kind of explains I guess how others see us. I was in Charleston, SC last August with my husband who was taking a class, so I arranged to take tours of everything I could for those 5 days we were there. One of the tours I went on was a culinary tour. Because it was a walking culinary tour of downtown Charleston we had to introduce ourselves and tell them where we were from and answer the question if we had ever had grits before. It was my turn, I said, "hey, I'm Teri from Seattle, and no, I've never had grits in my life, I've heard of them, but I really don't have any idea what they are? I always wondered if it was some sort of oatmeal?". They all chuckled, but she said, "Oh Seattle. There really aren't other people in the US like the people in Seattle", I laughed out loud.  It's kind of a regional stereotype isn't it, and no it doesn't bother me, I am kind of proud of it, even if we are weird. We really are proud of our reputation.

So, last night my daughter left school to walk down to work. She works at Ivar's which is famous and has been around since 1938, and it is on our famous waterfront. She was waiting at the crosswalk, her light said walk, she walked out into the street and was plowed into by yet another driver running a red light, in the middle of downtown Seattle, during rush hour. Unbelievable stuff. There was a crowd of people just behind her, but she was in front.

Thank god for our reputation that reinforces one of the stereotypes about us: we are educated. Recently you may have read that if you are going to have a heart attack in a city, have it in Seattle, because more people here are trained for CPR than anywhere else in the nation (more than 70% of our local population is trained to perform CPR). Not only did people rush to her side,  they made sure she didn't try to move her head, obviously they called 911, they talked to her, asked her questions, kept her alert, gave the EMTs a complete report as to what happened, and of course there are 10 people who gave police reports including a metro bus driver.   They picked up her purse which had spilled, they grabbed her cell phone, one person called Ivar's to tell them she wouldn't be into work, one person from Ross walked to Ivar's to tell them what happened to her.

Don't worry, she is going to be just fine. I just wanted you to meet my Seattle. My Seattle cares about people.  You really couldn't choose a better place to live. Yeah we are weird, we are good with that.