Originally posted March 1, 2007...
When I first told my other yankee friends that we were moving to Mississippi, they were horrified, wondering if we were going to be living in a shotgun shack, would we have indoor plumbing? I think they may have watched "Green Acres" one too many times. It's funny, I have been down here 9 years, and although my Chicago accent is not as strong as it once was, it must still be evident, as I get at least ONCE A WEEK…"you aren't from around here…are you?". I am not sure how many years I will have to live here before I qualify as "being from around here", but 9 isn't enough, evidently. What's even funnier…are the different southern dialects. People from Alabama sound different than people from Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas..etc. We have been to down to New Orleans several times…and while I *believe* they are speaking English…I have *no* idea what they are saying. I just nod in what seem to be the appropriate places and pray that what I just ordered won't be coming to the table alive or anything.
One thing I have noticed since moving here…there are a lot of barbeque places. While I like barbeque…I don't like the mess associated with it. I don't like getting sauce underneath my nails, or having grease all over my face, which is inevitable if you are eating ribs with your hands. I really don't like leaving a barbeque restaurant and smelling like it for the rest of the day. You just don't see a pork-based perfume…you know? I prefer to eat most foods (except sandwiches) with utensils, to avoid getting my hands all nasty. Prissy? Maybe. But if it were socially acceptable to wear disposable gloves while eating barbeque…I would do it. For the most part, I avoid eating in public in places like that, where they keep tubs of baby wipes at the table. People tend to give you weird looks when you are trying to cut the meat off of ribs with a fork and knife. Same thing with fried chicken. It's just not done, (a social faux pas) and you might as well be putting up a neon sign that says, "I am NOT FROM AROUND HERE".
I have also noticed that there are a lot more trees and plants down here too. Up north, you were lucky to have one…maybe two trees in your yard. To see a lot of trees…you had to go to a forest "preserve". However the trees down here come with a fun surprise that I don't recall up north. When we lived in our previous house, my husband went out into the yard to weedwack, only wearing a pair of shorts and some flip flops. He was out there for HOURS…weedwacking away. The yard looked great. He got all that ivy around the trees, they ivy going up the side of the house. When he woke up the next day…he was red and covered from head to toe in blisters, as miserable as I have ever seen him, completely covered in poison oak, except where his shorts were. It took several shots, and multiple tubes of cream to get it to go away. And guess what?..it spreads…to areas in which you REALLY REALLY don't want poison oak. He only THOUGHT he was miserable before.
I have only had poison oak once…when I visited my grandma down here when I was 14. My aunt thought it would be fun to take us to the redneckiest campground (ever) for the day so my cousins and I could ride horses. Well, *I* had not gotten on a horse since I was 5, and I am sure that was just one of those, "lets stick her and Dave up on this horse to get a cute picture" ride. I doubt we actually went anywhere. So, there I am, at the Redneck Dude Ranch, and I was going to ride on the back of this old decrepit horse with my cousin. I didn't even know how to get on it…so, I had to get a boost up, and that was an ordeal. The horse was even looking at me like I was a dumb@ss. As SOON as I got on the horse and was settled, this huge wasp flies up and stings me in my armpit. I slid off the back of the horses butt…screaming, crying and pissed off in general. It took like three seconds for it to swell up enough that I couldn't put my arm down. Well, this guy walks up…cowboy hat, boots, spurs…the whole bit. He had MAYBE 5 teeth…and a mouth full of chewing tobacco, with the juice dripping down his chin. I recall all of this with vivid clarity…because he took the stinky tobacco out of his mouth and stuck it up under my armpit. I was horrified, but I remember him saying that it would take away the sting and reduce the swelling, and then he put me back up on the horse, like "ain't no big thang".
So there I am, with a wad of someone else's chewing tobacco under my armpit, it's hotter than hades outside and I am riding behind my cousin on the world's oldest horse. Turns out…HE hadn't ever ridden a horse either, and didn't know how to steer it anymore than I did. So, this horse kept walking us into all these bushes, kudzu; if there was foliage…we went directly through it. Clear pathways…not so much.
Mercifully, the ride was over within an hour or so, and we got to go home, with my Aunt saying…WASN'T THAT FUN???? Yeah..it was awesome, can we come back tomorrow?…as I scratched my legs uncontrollably. I got back to my grandma's house and told her something was wrong with my legs. She diagnosed the problem as POISON OAK. Now, no matter what ailment you had…she had two kinds of treatments. One, was an enema (which didn't seem appropriate under these circumstances, THANKFULLY)…and the other was Preparation H. She spread the Preparation H all over my legs, and then under my armpit, for good measure, as it is known to cure wasp stings too. I have since read the back of the tube…and saw nothing on there about it curing toenail fungus, wasp stings, poison oak, chigger bites, etc…but she was convinced, and kept drums of it at her house.
So, there I was feeling pretty miserable, it was then decided that I would take my younger cousins to "the show". That would be going to the movie theater up north (or the movies), but down here…it is "the show". I didn't want to go…I was covered from head to toe in stinky Preparation H, and being 14, I was pretty embarrassed about that sort of thing. It didn't matter what I wanted…we were going. I finally got us up to the front of the line…and there was the small opening that you could slide the $$ through; the lady behind the glass starts sniffing the air and asks if I "smell that". M'am? I said. She said "it smells like Preparation H". huh…no sh!t, I wonder why?
Since then…I am very careful to count the leaves of anything even remotely looking "ivey-ish", and it seems a good enough reason to avoid yard work altogether.
"New York is where I'd rather stay…I get allergic smelling hay, I just adore a pent-house view, darlin' I love you, but give me Park Avenue"…lol. If you get that reference…then you have also watched too much tv.
No comments:
Post a Comment