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Above, Below, a Northern thing?

Wind slapped and grabbed at my too-short coat as I stood there, considering the question a stranger on Q Street had just posed.

"Is P Street above or below this street?" the young man said.
My first impulse was to say, neither. The sky is above, and the ground is below. In between is a lot of cold wind.
I realized that answer probably wouldn't be welcome. So I shifted my entire view of the universe from North Texas to Georgetown in D.C. to try to understand what he meant. I usually get along in D.C. the same way I did in North Texas, which is to ask directions from the first person I saw.
So I probably had a lot in common with my questioner, but I hadn't heard this above and below stuff before.
I realized we were actually standing on a hill, so maybe that had something to do with his alternate view of the universe.
"P Street is right down there," I said, pointing while I tacked a southernism into the sentence --"right."
"OK, thanks," he said.
He then walked "below" Q Street to P Street, about one-fourth of a block away.
I, too, walked down the hill, trudging "below" Q Street to a side entrance to my apartment building.
I had my own question: Was this "above" and "below" view of the world a northern thing?

Posted by Trish Choate at 12:22 PM | Permalink