When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (reading list .txt) 📖

myself having to deal with powerful hot flashes. And whenever I don’t feel well I like to nibble on my favorite comfort food…chicken and dumplings.

 

Unfortunately when I opened up my cupboard to pull down the spices I needed for the classic Southern dish, I found that I was lacking a few of them. Now I suppose I could have made the stuff without all the ‘special ingredients’, but where I come from, one does not bastardize a treasured recipe for convenience sake. So I decided I would make my way to the grocery store even though I felt like sin on a Wednesday.

 

*Sin on a Wednesday is an old Southern saying because there was a time when people would all go to church on Wednesday for Bible study. And if you ‘sinned on a Wednesday’ well, it was about as bad as ‘sinning on a Sunday’. (Apparently God, the Father Almighty has a day planner wherein He keeps close track of who’s been sinning and on what day.)

 

I got in my car hoping to make the trip short, sweet and wholly uneventful. But as I was driving at the posted 45MPH (because the road I was on is one of the sheriff department’s favorite places to catch speeders) I happened to glance in my rearview mirror and saw a huge red Hummer coming up fast behind me with a female driver who was chatting away on her cell phone as she smoked a cigarette and before I knew it, the front grill of her Hummer was so close to my rear bumper that I thought we might need to get married! 

 

Needless to say, I figured she would try to pass me as soon as we got to a point in road where there was a dashed line. But apparently in her world a double solid line means ‘sure go ahead risk your life and the lives of others so you can shave a couple of seconds off your trip’ because just after passing the main spot where deputy sheriffs like to hang out, she floored her brick on wheels and whipped into the other lane to pass me. I swear, I was so startled by her actions the hair on my arms stood up as she passed me. And when I noticed there was a car coming in the other direction, I hit my brakes so she could zip back over into the correct lane.

 

Now I utterly loathe it when people do things like what she had done and since I already wasn’t feeling too well, my inner Southern bitch sprang forth from the deep recesses of my light genteel, polite psyche allowing me to tap into my dark-trailer park princess side. I shouted out a few choice words about the dangerous driver followed by an out loud exclamation of, “Dear Lord, why don’t people like her get caught?!”

 

Then…out of the blue, she hit her brakes because she spotted one of our faithful civil servants at a stop sign ahead. I couldn’t help but laugh. And I nearly cried with laughter when he pulled out into our lane, directly in front of her.  Yes, I'll admit, I snorted with joy. As I followed behind the giant vehicle that was now forced to obey the speed limit, I noticed that there were stick figure decals of a mom, dad, 2 boys, 1 girl, a dog, a cat and 2 horses plastered to the back window.

 

Personally I see those little stickers as a beacon to perverts. Sort of like… ‘Oh, look Bob! There you go – a house with 2 boys and a girl. Nice. Very, very nice. I’ll just follow them and see where we wind up.’ (I’d love to know how many people who just read that went ‘Oh. My. God! I have to get that off my car NOW!’

 

However, the sweet little ‘stick figure family’ snapshot wasn’t nearly as interesting as the set of ‘steel balls’ that were hanging from the tow hitch on the rear of her Hummer as if the thing was a massive diesel powered steed looking for a dark parking lot and a lonely Ford Mustang to hump. What’s more, the license tag was a vanity plate that read, ‘22MCH4U’. It took me a few seconds to figure out what the alphanumeric code meant but eventually it dawned on me…Too too much for you…good grief.

 

 

Not only did I have a steel testicle toting SUV in front of me, but the owners of said vehicle felt it important to announce to the world that they thought they were better than everyone else. And I abhor conceited people so my inner Southern bitch once again emerged and my typically genteel disposition was cast aside as I rolled my eyes and muttered things that would have made my grandmother roll over in her grave…thank the Lord she was cremated.

 

Yes, knowing that the driver had to obey the now 35MPH speed limit because she was following the deputy made me giggle. But her law abiding ways didn’t last long because he turned down a crossroad and the Hell bent for leather Hummer driver took off.

 

Unfortunately, her speed demon ways nearly caused her to take out one of the cadets attending the summer session at Oak Ridge Military Academy, an historic military academy, in the town right next to mine.  The fellow was about two steps away from entering into the pedestrian crossing but thankfully he stopped just in time to keep from getting squashed like a bug wearing an upper level cadet’s uniform. I remember gasping loudly as the giant vehicle rocked back and forth in place when its antilock brakes engaged. And I’m not sure but as I passed the cadet a few seconds later he wore a shocked expression on his face...almost as if he’d been scolded by the driver for getting in her way.

 

I couldn't wait to get away from this obnoxious woman.  And wouldn’t you know it, the gargantuan gas guzzler turned into the parking lot of the grocery store where I was headed and then proceeded to whip her monstrous machine into two parking spaces. Oh, how I despise it when people are so rude and inconsiderate! But I took a deep breath and figured I was being overly sensitive because I felt crappy.

 

Once I made it inside the store, I spied the driver with her cell phone still stuck to her ear.  Her three children. the same ones depicted in stick-figure form on her back window, wandered nearby until the teenage daughter, who looked like she’d rather have her nails ripped out than to be at the store with her mother and siblings, wandered off leaving the bleach-bottle-blonde mom and her two surgically enhanced breasts (I’ll bet you thought I was going to say her sons…you thought wrong! Though to be honest her WAY-too-perfect-knockers were probably like children to her) to deal with her youngest children – the two boys as noted on the back window and who were far from cherubic angels that liked to touch everything.

 

I decided to hold my tongue when I saw them put their hands on several plums and then on some apples because I really didn’t feel like using the commanding ‘teacher voice’ I’d honed over twelve years of teaching so I ignored them, got a shopping basket and dashed…no, limped with great zeal to the aisle I needed. Once I’d grabbed my spices I decided I’d get some fresh chicken so I wouldn’t have to defrost any. So I backtracked to the meat department where I saw Hummer mom (phone still affixed to her ear) and her sons. Then I heard the smaller of the two boys yell out, “MAMA, FRANKIE CALLED ME A STUPID TERD-HEAD!! To wit mama scolded loudly (while her phone was still stuck to her ear), “Frankie you know we don’t say that word! Tell Jessie you’re sorry right now!”

 

*Yes, that’s right – the boys were named Frank and Jessie. What’s more, I have a sneaky suspicion their last name is James which would mean their names are Frank and Jessie James, as in the notorious Wild West outlaws, because their mother strikes me as being married to a man who’d think giving his boys bad ass outlaw monikers would be funny as hell.*

 

Then Jessie yelled out, “YEAH, FRANKIE, I AIN’T STUPID!!” (Apparently stupid is a ‘no no’ word but terd-head is perfectly fine.)

 

I grabbed my chicken and left the area to pick up a few more things, hoping that was the last I’d seen of them. But then again the way things had been going in regards to this family I should have known there was more in store because about five minutes later, after gathering some odds and ends, I remembered I needed to get some frozen broccoli so I hobbled over to frozen veggie land only to catch site of Frank and Jessie putting their mouths up against the frosty glass doors and blowing what Jessie called ‘face farts’ onto them then laughing like they’d done something absolutely awesome.

 

A few seconds later, I heard their mother (and YES, the phone was still up to her ear) snap at her boys, “I done told you two to stop that!” (What terrible luck! It seems I missed the first few ‘face farts’.)

 

That’s when the daughter shuffled over to her mother and tossed a pint of Dryer’s Dibs ice cream into the cart. Hummer mother looked at her daughter as she took the phone away from her ear while she asked in a perturbed tone, “Why’d you get them? You know your daddy says them things look like baby horse terds.”

 

The boys snorted with laughter and started sing-songing, ‘Baby horse terds, horse terds!)

 

(Oh my Good Lord in Heaven! What is it with the terd-talk?!)

 

Whereupon the daughter whined in her very best ‘God, I hate my life’ voice said, “Cause I like ‘em. Duhhhh”. After which she smacked Frankie on the head while adding, “Shut up, brat!”

 

And then there was a chorus of angry sounding country-hick-speak coming from Hummer mother and her children and all I wanted to do was to get out of that store and get home so I could feel miserable in peace. So, I snatched a bag of broccoli out of the freezer. I made my way to the checkout counter and as Patty the clerk slowly rang up my items, all I could think was, Oh sweet Jesus in a manger! Put some damn lead in, Patty…you’re in NASCAR country for God’s Sake!

 

Oh, that’s right...I invoked two of the three ‘I cannot believe this Holy Trinity’ If I’d have pulled out the third one – ‘Lord, have Mercy!’ I think the Heavens would’ve opened up and a shower of Dryer’s baby horse terd Dibs might’ve fallen on me)

 

Eventually, all my items were tallied, I swiped my AMEX card and I left.

 

I often wonder what Hummer mama and her off-spring are up to these days?  Face-farting?  Terd-chanting?  I suppose I'll never know but at least I can go to my grave knowing that 'stupid' is bad while references to anal expulsions is perfectly acceptable among the steel-balled, giant SUV crowd.  And what a better woman I am today for having been so enlightened!

 

*Turd or terd - does it matter? Though turd is the 'proper' way to spell the slang term which is a derivation the Old English spelling of tord which actually had its roots the Norse language where it was tord-yfill; terd-is a blending of the words tord and herd as 'terd' is what herders/farmers sometimes refer to manure as.*