Unfortunately They Charge Per Pound

          Ben and I are planning our honeymoon to the Philippines in November and we began the search for airline tickets.  Having no frame of reference for traveling in Southeast Asia, I had announced that I was flying Business Class at the minimum because I was not about to fly Coach for the 15-17 hours it takes to get from Los Angeles to Manila.  The exchange rate from pesos (Philippine currency) to dollars is 51:1, so at first I thought the prices were in pesos.  When I realized they were in dollars I was nonplussed, to say the least.  I won't tell you the price, but suffice it to say, that the cost of two round trip tickets would get you an acre of land in central Illinois or a 2010 Toyota Corolla, with high mileage.
         After drinking 64 oz. of Diet Snapple Peach Iced Tea, to get over my shock and dismay, I decided to check the price for Fed-Ex to mail us in the same, or if less expensive, separate boxes.  Unfortunately, they charge per pound, unlike those "If I Fits, It Ships" boxes from the Post Office.  Ben's box would have been very inexpensive as he is about as big as a minute.  On the other hand, the cost for my ample body (almost as many minutes as in that song from 'Rent') was on par with a Coach ticket and, although I do not relish the experience, I would rather be the one who decides how to abuse my body, as opposed to the unfulfilled, and therefore angry, shipping conglomerate employee.
         So, we are flying Coach with the tacky masses; meaning both poorly attired as well as sticky from Lord only knows what.  Therefore, I must invest in some sort of chemical combination to help me sleep the fourteen and a half hours it will take to fly non-stop from CA to Manila.  Anybody have suggestions for non-alcoholic, non-illegal, non-prescription methods to sleep while traveling?  Seems like my only options might be a combination of Melatonin, despair and/or airline snacks.  Can a Stroopwaffle act as a sedative?
         And like the Right Reverend Robert Tilton would say, Pray, send money or both.  Blessed be, y'all.

Southern Hospitality?

I recently read an article on CNN.com that listed the most diverse cities in America.  The top 5 are all within an hour’s drive of my current home, which, as you know, is about 25 miles south of San Francisco. And diverse it is.  You wouldn't know it by my church (Menlo Park Presbyterian) but the vast majority of the citizens in this area are Asian and Hispanic.  And I have learned all manner of things about other cultures that I never knew.  Like how there are differences between northern and southern Chinese and not just in relation to height.  And how even though you have no way of distinguishing from which South and Central American country someone hails but woe be unto you if you mistakenly insinuate they are from the wrong one.  And to all you politically correct people out there, I have been assured in more than one dialect that there is no place called Hispania, so the catch all ‘Hispanic’ is not any more popular than my Daddy’s designation of “brown people”.

              This discussion of differences and accents and all reminded me of the previous post and some of the more colorful language that my, and to my horror, Honey Boo-Boo’s, family use more often than we should.  I refuse to watch that show, but grudgingly admit I have heard or used every sentence printed in those publications found by the gum, batteries and candy bars at your local grocery emporiums.  I know they recently were quoted as saying 'beautimous'.  I hope against hope that they do not use the term that I am loathe to admit I used at work recently.

Several of my managers and I were discussing something and I meant to use the term ‘tiny’ but instead, in a rare moment of letting my guard down, probably due to my mild Diet Snapple Peach Iced Tea addiction, I let fly a term that my family uses when referring to someone short of stature.  We say ‘tee-niney’, instead of tiny.   There is no way to recover from that phrase, dear friends.  You can’t simply un-say it.  You just have to “stop that train” so to speak, and redirect the conversation.  And while I was able to steer the discourse in another direction, I feel quite sure there were tongues just a wagging when I stepped out of the room.

            Recently, my new management trainee stopped by to talk and asked me about my colorful language. (Hi Susan!)  It seems that due to my dress, accent and sometimes folksy vernacular, she finds me intriguing, “like something out of Tennessee Williams”.   As she is from the Midwest, she isn’t used to Southerners outside of their native habitat or, really, inside their native habitat.  She moved here from Michigan to start her new job, not expecting to be getting such a big dose of Mississippi right here in the land of the, apparently, multi-culti heathen. 
             I have visited Michigan only once but I am a big fan due to Michigan being one of the most competitive Miss America states.  They have had five winners including the lady who was the catalyst for the social platforms that are now required for all contestants.  Kaye Lani Rae Rafko was an Oncology Nurse when she hula-danced her way to victory in 1988 and spent her year as Miss America touring the country speaking about AIDS and hospice care.  I got to meet her in 2011 in Las Vegas.  I know another Michiganian (I looked it up) named Jason Morgan, from when I lived in DC.  He will one day be President.  You heard it here first.
            And I know precisely where each of these Michiganders (also acceptable) live(d) on “the mitten”.  If you don’t know what that means, you have never met someone from Michigan as they will hold their hand up as if they are stopping you in the name of love and show you where they reside.  If you look at a map, go ahead I’ll wait, you can see that the regular part of Michigan looks like a mitten; a giant Mrs. Field’s cookie cake of a mitten (What?  I’m hungry), but a mitten nonetheless. 
            The other part of Michigan, called, I believe, the Upper Peninsula is part of their state although no one seems to know how or why.  It may have been stolen from Canada or Wisconsin.  I am imagining a frontier politician desperate for re-election, sizing up a “vacant lot” across the water and paddling over to stake claim for Michigan and using the votes of the indigenous peoples of Canada (who were kind and quiet and fond of socialized medicine and crappy music) to remain in the Senate or House or whichever one wastes taxpayer dollars.
            And I said all that to say this:  it’s no wonder Flint, MI (which is on the peninsula according to Michael Moore and it’s up to your political leanings whether or not you believe him) died a slow, tragic death as some towns do when the main employer (car factory) closes its doors.  There was nowhere to go for fun except Wisconsin and how many times can one wear a hat made of cheese before the reality of shame seeps into your unconscious?  That’s actually a bad example as I have seen these Cheeseheads (and who would voluntarily call themselves such?) each and every year in the stands at football games in the snow, bare-chested whether they should be or not.
             That just doesn’t seem to happen as regularly in the South.  Of course I’m talking about towns dying, not people who are inappropriately semi-nude in public.  The resilience of Southern towns is admirable.  These hamlets, most of which are too small to warrant inclusion on most maps, can weather any storm, literal or figurative.  They will survive when there is nothing left except a store, a church and three houses.  There may only be 5 people and two cows but they retain their identity and always with a sign.  Even if that sign states your simultaneous entrance and exit. 
             Transylvania, LA is where my Mother’s people are from.  Yes I know I just ended that sentence in a preposition.  That one, too.  Based on my last visit there in the late 1990s, there was a gas station, what used to be a cotton gin, a tiny elementary school and some houses.  But they still have a post office and a bait shop and I dare you to suggest they are too tiny to be considered a town.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.
                Cities up north lose one store and the rest of the town is immediately shuttered, all citizens fleeing as if from a natural disaster.  In the South, you close the one factory in town, someone will immediately open a business making t-shirts proclaiming “Tater Junction – Useta be the home of the Sand Road Sawmill” and selling them to Yankees who are lost on vacation trying to find the Mississippi River.  Of course those Yankees and the citizens of Tater Junction and surrounding communities will be in need of all and sundry, well, sundries.  So they will add purveyors of drinks, food and other accoutrement (like pecan logs and pralines) and the next thing you know the Sand Road Sawmill is a flourishing mini mall full of items that would have previously been donated to the White Elephant Sale at the Tater Junction Baptist Church, but are now advertised as antiquities of Southern heritage.  The manager of this antique mall is also the agent/MeeMaw of noted regional artist Lee Ellen Battenfield, who is in reality an 11-year old who placed 3^rd in watercolors at the 4-H Crafts Fair. 
                You may be asking yourself, why someone would stay in a place like that?  My answer is there is only so far most Southerners will move before they plant their feet and say, “That’s it.  We’re home.”  As someone who was informed by his parents (when he asked why they were re-locating to Mississippi) “because we said so”, I can attest to the fact that Southerners are not leaving God’s Country and that particular designation stops not too far north of Mississippi and not much further west than Dallas.  Most of Tennessee we will take; Kentucky, we’re not so sure about.  And the only thing West Virginia is good for is keeping Mississippi from being last place in education rankings.  I know, I know, that’s just downright Un-Christian.  Not untrue, but definitely un-Christian.
             And as my Mother always said, “When you start acting like that, you know it’s time to just hush and go to bed.”  And with that, I bid you good night.  Well, good night in the sense that I’m stopping this post; I’ve had more than a tee-niney bit of Snapple and shall be up way past the time decent people have called it a day.

Cornbread and Public Indecency

              The inherent differences between my father and I have never been quite as obvious as they were this weekend.  I arrived at the San Jose airport returning from a week-long project management certification for the government and I was wearing a basic travel outfit of colored chinos, white oxford, white Jack Purcell lace-ups and a grey cardigan because something’s got to absorb the boldness of mi pantalones (that’s Spanish).  For this trip, my chinos were fuchsia.  Fuchsia is the physical manifestation of the word awesome.  Now, you don’t have to dress like me in order for me to refrain from judgment but when my Daddy rolled out of his truck to let me drive home, he was wearing his redneck uniform (jeans with suspenders, pocket t-shirt and Tractor Supply hat).  And this, I truly don’t mind.  However, the addition of house shoes with no socks was a bit much as was the fact that his pants were not buttoned or zipped because, I assume, he couldn’t be bothered after his pre-airport toileting.  I’m not sure I even want to know the reasons why.

                After we got home and I unpacked, he reminded me that since I was away for his “day to pick the groceries” that he wanted to pick where we ate dinner.  I was too tired to cook so I heartily agreed and left to go get the BBQ pizza and wings he had seen on a commercial.  I guess he is susceptible to suggestion, too.  Maybe that’s where I get it. 

                On the way back from Round Table Pizza, I stopped to get our drinks (Coke Zero for him, Snapple Diet Peach Iced Tea for me) at the quickie mart down the street.  When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a woman with her pants completely pulled down.  Like all the way down.  I saw more of her butt cheeks than I have of my own.  And she was urinating.  Squatting beside a gas pump.  Visible from the street.  Without shame.  I thought at first I must be hallucinating as this is just not something I expect to see even in California, land of the heathen.  And then we locked eyes.  The amount of confidence she exuded could have gotten her a career in politics had her lot in life been a different one.

                I parked and walked inside and said to the cashier, “You know that woman by the gray pickup is urinating in your parking lot?” 

                The cashier said, “Dang, man, I told her our bathroom was ‘Employees Only’ but she could ignore the sign and use it anyway.”

                After I paid, I left still not believing I had seen what I had seen.  I couldn’t wait to get home to tell The Dad and then we could laugh about how gross people are and maybe he’d remember some misbegotten adventure with some heinously white trash cousin and we’d be set for dinner time conversation if I included my extensive knowledge of the behavior of sketchy folks.  Sometimes at dinner, we read because there’s just not a whole lot to say between two people who have nothing in common but their lack of commonalities.

                After I told the story, he just looked at me.  I said, “I still can’t believe it.”

                He replied, “There oughta be a law.”

                I said, “I think there has to be.”

                He said, “I hope so.  I mean, businesses shouldn’t be allowed to have an ‘Employees Only’ bathroom.”

                I stared and said, “THAT’s what you got out of my story?”

                He looked confused and said, “What?”

                “You think the weird thing was the bathroom rules and not the woman who stripped half-naked and tee-teed on the side of a gas pump facing the street?”

                “What’s the big deal about that?”

                “You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

                “I see what you think about me.”

                “Answer the question please.  Have you or have you not urinated in public?”

                “I won’t dignify that with an answer,” he said with more disdain than is warranted from a person who considers potted meat an amuse bouche.   My assumption was based on the fact he was eating it when I got home knowing full well I was en route with dinner.  Excuse me, SUPPER. 

                I wasn’t sure what else to say so I just stopped talking while he pouted.  Then we shared our pizza and wings and the ensuing indigestion.  Nothing says uncomfortable like two people attempting to burp in silence.

                I felt kind of bad so this afternoon I made cornbread.  In a cast iron skillet.  Just like a Southern woman, which is fine except I am not a woman and do not remember purchasing said skillet.  Where would one obtain this item, anyway?  Aren’t they just always there in a southern family, like grits for breakfast or crazy relatives?  I try to tell him love isn’t buying things but apparently I think love is cooking things.  Otherwise I have no explanation for my behavior. 

These latent abilities in the kitchen are a little closer to my roots than I am comfortable admitting at this juncture.  I need to go put on a smoking jacket and cravat and read something really pretentious, just to be on the safe side.  Full disclosure, I would need to buy a smoking jacket and cravat, but I could just go sit on my sun porch and silently judge people while pretending to read French deconstructionist philosophy or, at the very least, the Andy Warhol diaries.

He really enjoyed the cornbread. 

He never did answer my question.