Rooting for the Home Team

When I was 10 years old I moved from my waspy, upper middle class New England house and wound up living in a tent in the rural South. It was quite the culture shock. But the biggest shock of all was finding myself in a public school where only 1 percent of the students looked anything like me. This was something I had never experienced before, and I got beaten up quite often as a result.

I also had a great deal of trouble adjusting to the backward Florida school system. It was several years before I started learning anything that I hadn’t previously been taught in Connecticut, and when they tested me and determined that I was reading at college level at the age of 10, they weren’t nearly as impressed by that as they were that I was voluntarily reading anything at all.

At one point my mother asked me if I even had textbooks. I told her yes, but that I did my homework in class, as it only took a minute. No reason to lug those books home.

Once, my teacher was talking about the Civil War and she asked whose side everyone would be on. “This is easy,” I thought. “Union, of course.” But I was stunned to discover that all the children of color around me chose the Southern side.

I was normally quiet and kept to myself to avoid the inevitable beating. But this… I couldn’t handle it. “Are you guys crazy??? You’re supporting the side of slavery!” None of them changed their minds, however. I was speechless.

As an adult looking back, it’s a bit more understandable. In that school system, they were taught virtually nothing about history or human rights. Most of them were so poor that they’d probably never stepped foot outside the backwater town in which we lived. They were simply rooting for the home team, as if this were a football game. I have no doubt that every one of them came to their senses when they entered the real world.

It wouldn’t be the last time I felt like the only voice of reason in an insane situation. I feel that way now when I see people supporting Donald Trump or denying global warming. Forgive them. They know not what they do.

[Image credit: theblaze.com]

On Being a Hot Mess

A Canadian friend of mine (waving hello to Sim) was telling me of his various health issues, and I replied, “You’re a hot mess!” Every once in a while my Southern comes out of my mouth. I can’t help it. He had never heard the phrase before, and had to look it up. (Which charmed me to the tips of my toes.)

Out of pure curiosity, I decided to look it up, too. I was really surprised at the wide array of definitions, and none of them seemed to fit the true depth of feeling that this phrase evokes. So what follows is my rambling explanation. (I’d probably be able to be more concise if I weren’t such a hot mess myself.)

First of all, hot mess is not, repeat, not an insult. It’s like saying, “You’ve got so much going on, your life is such a mess, that I don’t know how you function, and yet you do, and I admire that like crazy.” It’s like calling someone a “real piece of work” but stripping all the negativity out of it.

If I consider you a hot mess, I appreciate you. I am also commiserating with you, and laughing with you. Make no mistake, I wouldn’t want to be you, and yet I think I’ve got a whole lot to learn from you about your ability to cope.

When this phrase came into being, it was more a physical comment. It usually referred to those lucky few who could be all scruffy and sloppy and yet still look great. It can still mean that, but over time it has also evolved into a more existential statement about being able to live a complicated, disorganized life with a whole lot of style.

So, mad respect for all those hot messes out there! Welcome aboard! It may be a bumpy ride, but it’s an adventure!

Floridation

Yes, I spelled that the way I intended to. This isn’t a rant on fluoride. (And that is a controversial topic. Fluoride is a very toxic chemical, but at the same time putting it in water has drastically reduced infant mortality rates and… I digress.)

No, the topic for today is how I stick out like tits on a boar hog. Yep. That’s an expression that wouldn’t likely escape the mouth of your average Seattleite. It’s my Florida coming out.

And that’s ironic, because I was born in Connecticut. I lived there for the first 10 years of my life, and when we arrived in Florida I had pretty much convinced myself that I had been abandoned in a third world country. I looked down my nose at all things Floridian. Indeed, it was about two years before I learned anything new in school, and I never felt comfortable in the conservative, fundamentalist Baptist atmosphere there. I spent the rest of my life up to this point desperately trying to leave.

So in spite of the nearly 40 years I lived there, I always felt like an outsider. I wouldn’t, couldn’t blend in, and therefore I pretty much assumed I had escaped unscathed. But now that I’m in the Pacific Northwest, I realize for the first time that I have a Southern streak across my being that is colored a vivid Florida orange. I don’t really speak with a Florida accent, but I inadvertently lay it on pretty thick depending on who I talk to. And my speech is peppered with Florida expressions. “Y’all”, “fixin’ to”, “cattywampus”.

And when properly inspired I am quite good at laying on that Southern sugary politeness which is actually blatant hostility upon closer inspection. That takes practice. It’s not for sissies.

I can’t take Seattle insects seriously. I have to laugh when people freak out when a tiny little slow moving bug crosses their path. In Florida the bugs are on steroids, and have the size and aggression to prove it.

And I find myself craving cornbread. (But not grits. I never was that bad.) And the tomatoes here are horrible.

I seem to move slower than everyone around me, although it will be interesting to see if that’s still the case when the weather turns cold. Washingtonians also have a peculiar idea about what’s “relatively flat.” And I just can’t relate to doing yard work in the rain.

And while I’m much, MUCH happier in the liberal environs of Seattle, I doubt anyone will ever mistake me for a native. Somewhere along the way I became Floridated. Florida-ized? Floridified?

Whatever, y’all.

[Image credit: Pinterest]

I’m Fixin’ To

When I was 10 years old we moved from a mansion in Connecticut to a tent in Florida. I was uprooted from family and friends and seasons and all things familiar, and I never felt safe again. I was angry and terrified.

My mother turned into someone I didn’t know. She would come home from a hard day’s work at the only job she could find, as a cashier in a grocery store, and she would scream at me from her exhaustion and anxiety. I learned to hide in the woods for an hour or two, shaking and crying, until she had a chance to wind down.

I was also plopped down in the middle of a public school where I was the minority in the extreme and was beaten up on a pretty much daily basis. The education was so far behind what I was used to that it was two whole years before I learned anything new and had to actually open a text book. My mother would ask me why I didn’t have any homework and I’d say I did it right on the spot. I made straight A’s. I practically phoned it in.

The only thing I could be sure would never be taken away from me was my intelligence. I clung to that. I still do. And it probably makes me come off as pompous and arrogant a lot of the time. It’s purely a defense mechanism, though. I’m a mess inside.

It’s a shame, too, because that habit, early on, closed me off from many joyful experiences. There are some things about Southern culture that are delightful. While I was busy making fun of the Southern accent, “I’m fixin’ to go to the sto’.” I was missing out on the food, the slower pace, the weather, the beaches, the warmth of the people. Millions of people spend fortunes to vacation in Florida, and I wanted nothing more than to go home. Maybe that’s when my love of travel was born. I was convinced that life would be better just about anywhere else.

I hope that with age and the passage of time I’ve become more open to the experiences life has thrown at me, even if they appear unwelcome on the surface. Because you just never know when you’ll pull a gem out of the detritus of life, but you can only do that if you’re  willing to look about you.

Environmental Meddling

Anyone who lives in the Southeastern United States is familiar with kudzu. This amazingly insidious vine was introduced to this country by the Japanese at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and since then, according to Wikipedia, it’s been spreading at the rate of 150,000 acres annually, which seems really intimidating until you realize that that’s roughly equivalent to the amount of rain forest that’s chopped down every day.

A great deal of time and money is spent attempting to keep the kudzu invasion in check, and nothing seems to work. It has been known to suffocate acres of trees, pull down power lines, and crush abandoned houses under the sheer weight of its proliferation.

Like it or not, we need to accept the fact that kudzu is here to stay. And since that’s the case, we should try to turn this negative into a positive. Most Americans would be surprised to know that kudzu is edible. It’s a great source of starch and is eaten regularly in Vietnam and Japan and other parts of Asia. It also makes great grazing fodder. Goats, in particular, love it. The vines can be used in basket weaving, and its fiber can be made into cloth and paper. Some people use it to treat migraines, tinnitus, vertigo, and hangovers.

In light of this, I say, why not let kudzu run rampant? Help feed and clothe those in need, and reduce the cost of feeding grazing animals. Even better, if we really let it take over, think of the time we’d regain by never having to maintain our lawns again. Each time we fertilize our lawns, more harmful nutrients are entering our water table, causing algae blooms in our rivers and doing untold amounts of damage to the environment. Kudzu is the perfect solution for that. All we’d have to do is cut new holes where our doors and windows should be every few weeks, and voila! No fertilizing, no other yard work.

We wouldn’t ever have to paint our houses, because no one would be able to see them. Also, as our ozone depletes, skin cancer is on the rise. Kudzu would greatly reduce this problem because it’s an excellent source of shade. In fact, if given half the chance, kudzu would ensure that we never see the sun again.

I also have a theory that if we introduced kudzu to the moon and mars, they’d both be lush and green and producing oxygen within a year. All thanks to a pretty little plant that never should have been here in the first place.

We humans are just sooooo good at fiddling with the planet. Why not go for it? What’s the worst that could happen?

Yes, that’s a house.

Kudzu gone wild. Every Southerner in the US has seen this somewhere at least once in their lives.

The Cigarette Girl and the Waving Man

I spent the first 10 years of my life in Connecticut, so when we moved to a small Southern town in the 1970’s, it was quite a culture shock. The segregation was more subtle than it had been in the 50’s, of course. We all went to school together. But we certainly didn’t live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same churches or socialize in any significant way. Every rural town has its characters, but in Apopka, Florida where I grew up, ours were even more tragic or heroic or, I suppose, both, due in part to this unofficial segregation.

Every day, rain or shine, you were bound to come across the cigarette girl. She looked like she was in her early 20’s. She was always in a ragged house dress and barefoot, summer or winter. I never saw her move, but she must have, because she popped up on various street corners throughout town, and she’d just stand there in a catatonic state, looking like an impoverished, unkempt and extremely neglected statue. The saddest thing about her was that she always had cigarette butts stuck haphazardly in amongst her corn rows. It was disgusting. It was tragic. And the fact that her family and the powers that be in the city did absolutely nothing for her, and I felt completely unequipped to do anything myself, made me feel like the world was not a safe place, and that you couldn’t count on adults at all. Whenever I saw her I was mesmerized by her, but was too afraid to approach her. I tried to find out her story, and I did hear a rumor that she had been gang raped when she was 5 years old, and hadn’t been “right in the head” since. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I do know that the entire town seemed to be content to let her roam the streets like a stray dog, and there’s something very, very wrong with a community that’s willing to do that.

On the way home from school or the library or the drug store, we would have to drive through the poorer neighborhoods because we were extremely poor ourselves, and therefore lived on the outskirts of town. Every single day unless it was raining, we would pass this broken down shack next to the railroad tracks, and sitting out front on one of those ratty old webbed lawn chairs would be a very old, weathered man. Whenever a car would drive by, he’d wave and smile, so I called him the waving man. I knew nothing more about him. He never had anything with him. No newspaper, no radio, no book, not even a glass of sweet tea. But he never looked bored. He just sat there and waved his wrinkled old hand as if that was his calling, as if he had always been there and always would be.

(Image credit: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/lreyns/interesting/ )

At the time it never occurred to me to stop and talk to him. I think I’d have been too scared because of the neighborhood or too intimidated to cross our great cultural divide. But I was always curious about him, and would have loved to know his story. He looked happy, and yet I’m amazed that shack he lived in didn’t fall down every time a train went by and rattled its already shaky foundation. I never saw him with friends or relatives, but he looked much too old to be taking care of himself. Still, he was there, day after day, smiling, waving, enduring and apparently timeless, living his life. And I would always wave back. I hope he was content and cared for by his neighbors during his last days, but I’ll never know, now.

The last time I went back to Apopka it had changed so much that I could barely find my way around. The drug store was a mere shadow of its former self. The library, once housed in a cozy corner of a strip mall, had moved on to bigger, more modern accommodations. Everything seemed bigger and more modern, in fact. My town had joined the 21^st century at last. But I will always remember it as a small town that looked the other way, and maybe that was good, and maybe it wasn’t. That was just the way Apopka was.