In case of emergency, don't break glass, fill it with vodka

At some moments it occurs to me more than others that I am probably not the first person any one should choose to have along during an emergency.

I don't tend to freak out, so don't worry about that.  I'm not wailing, or hyperventilating or crying or panicking in any overtly troubling way.  In fact, now, when I hear that bloodcurdling scream that can only come from a child with copious amounts of blood, I coolly grab the keys to the car, and throw on some shoes.
I don't shut down.
I won't become catatonic on you, either.  I'm not going to become dead weight.  I won't need to be carried out babbling or anything.  I will be the one who ties you a tourniquet that I fashioned from two sticks and a bra strap.  Your emergency is under control.

The problem really starts to surface when the emergency involves me.  Will I be able to put on my life vest and blow calmly into the red tube to inflate?  Yes, of course.  Will I be able to assist the flight attendant with the Exit?  Certainly.  Will I adjust my mask before helping others?  Just like I'm told.
Will I be focused on the task at hand?

Hell no.  I will be thinking how awful I'll look when they find me in the sea, mascara all runny.  I'll be thinking that I wish I'd packed pretty underwear instead of everyday so that when the rescuers sort through my belongings, they'll think I was elegant rather than practical.  Hoping that Spanx will be able to resist G forces, leaving my artificially trim waistline while clinging to my seat cushion.

Today, in by far the worst of the Isaac weather, my kids went back to school amid tornado watches and warnings.  Mind you, we DID get that day in the pool on Monday.  But, today they're back.

I'm not worried about them in their cinder block buildings with competent, safety oriented faculty and staff.

I'm worried about my sorry butt.  I will run to the under-stairs closet.  But mind you, I'll really be thinking about how crappy my house is going to look on TV after my closet explodes into the backyard.

How I Moved to Acceptance, AL

Being, as I am, a consumer of pop science in all forms (I like it good and dumbed down), it should be unsurprising to you that I turn to that medium to reconcile, explain and guide my life when things get a little dicey.

School was canceled Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week because Hurricane Isaac may or may not be assaulting our shores.  Look, after the disaster of Katrina, I understand the impulse to be "better safe than sorry."  But, I can't help but feel that just as politics (who, Brownie!?) played a role in the handling of that last mega-disaster that nearly wiped a city off our maps, politics rear their ugly heads again.  Rumors are swirling that Alabama Governor Bentley called a state of emergency (for a tropical storm--Isaac is, at press time, still not a hurricane--that is going to strike 2 whole states away) so as to garner himself some attention while skipping the RNC.  Regardless of whether is he was being proactive or paranoid, my inner cynic doesn't think he was really considering my personal safety when he made his announcements. Clearly, school needed to be canceled this far in advance. I mean,  LOOK AT THIS WEATHER (menacing, no?):

Which brings me back to pop science.  We have lived in Mobile nearly 6 years.  And, according to Elsabeth Kubler-Ross' 1969 model of grieving, I have passed through 4 stages of mourning this relocation:

1.  Denial:  I CANNOT live in Alabama.  Alabama is for mouth breathers and rednecks.  Alabama is the "Heart of Dixie," home to racial injustice, Governor Wallace, meth labs, the Civil Rights Movement, cotton, hicks, and good ol' boys.  This is no place for a girl who grew up in Orange County, California (the birthplace of the John Birch Society, John Wayne, the Crystal Cathedral, Disneyland, and assorted other meaningful contributions to society).  This is not where I am going to live.  I am not 'from' here.  I'm like Hemingway and Stein and Fitzgerald--a disillusioned ex-pat momentarily caught in another country, another world.  This is NOT going to be permanent.

2.  Anger:  Towards husband: "HOW COULD YOU BRING US HERE?!?!"  Towards bumper stickers:  "You miss REAGAN?  Funny, he missed himself too, in that second term."  "NOBAMA?  You're so right!  Clearly, you've been living the high life, and you've got a 1980s beater truck, diabetes, and no teeth to show for it."  Towards the SEC, towards the Jesuits (they do run M's college), towards every one who could possibly wear it.  Even if you didn't think you were wearing my rage, you probably did at one point.

3.  Bargaining:  I will work 2 jobs We can run away to another country in the middle of the night, we can forfeit our citizenship and run off to a South American country that is more developed than Alabama. We can ask M to change careers.  He could go to law school, or medical school, or HELL, trade school.  We could get on a raft and go to Cuba.  We could sell our children.  We could flee to Canada.  We could become Mormon Missionaries and go to West Africa.  ANYTHING is better than Alabama.

4.  Depression:  Um, yeah.  Well, I would elaborate on this except it's too obvious.

So, after struggling through these four steps of grief, and hovering over, but unable to move on to the final step (Acceptance), my mourning encounters another obstacle:  the hurricane (or its less menacing sibling, the tropical storm) and all ensuing ridiculousness.

Just when I think I will be able to transition through the final steps of mourning, Alabama does something so annoying that I have this setback.  Back to Step 2.

How infuriating is it that school was canceled yesterday, at least 36 hours ahead of a storm that as it turns out, is not going to directly hit us?  How infuriating is it that the Mobile School Destruct (spelling mine) now can't decide how these missed days are to be made up?  (Some suggestions include Saturdays, adding 15 minutes of class per day, every day, for the next 22 weeks, and the least popular solution, adding 3 days on to the end of the school year).  Because, we all know that at 49th in the Union, Alabama really needs to sabotage its education system further.  All of this because The Powers that Be in my state--the ones that advocate small government and states' rights, and local control over local regions--had a meeting of the state legislature and told my School Destruct when school had to start and stop.  All of this because, we couldn't possibly schedule 181 days of school so that we would have a cushion of one day in case of--you know, HURRICANE.  All of this because a state of emergency allows the state access to federal funds from the very federal government that everyone here abhors.  Funds that our citizens don't feel they should have to pay into with their taxes.  Funds that come from that socialist president of ours and his fascist socialist organizations like FEMA.    

All of this to make me absolutely insanely angry about living here again.

Step 5, Acceptance, is elusive, and by all psychological accounts, not obtained by everyone grappling with loss.  Six years.  And here I am. 

Recovery is nothing if not a series of small steps.  I will reconcile myself to the hysteria caused by this tropical storm.  I will appreciate that yesterday, my kids didn't have to go to school on what was, quite possibly, the most beautiful day of summer. I will consider myself lucky that they are safe and snug in my house when (if) it ever starts to rain today.  Until then, I will continue to sit by the pool, sipping my coffee, and watching the kids play in the sparkling water.  I will remind myself that even though The Fine State of Alabama, its State Representatives, and the Mobile County School Destruct don't seem to value education, I still do; my kids, at least, will not be dumber for these lost days.  I will relish this beautiful breeze as long as it lasts, or until it becomes a ferocious howl.  I will move into Acceptance, dammit.  

We're gonna need a bigger boat

It's like Shark Week.  You know it's coming every August.  It's going to be graphic and stunning, and you know you're going to see some of the same stuff you've seen before.  It's out there, swimming in the water, and you're compelled to watch because you can't turn away, but there's going to be damage, and crying, and shock, and you're still going to watch it.  Every day of that week.  Every August.

(Insert Jaws theme here)

Scary, right?

Yeah, it's back to school time.  You're swimming in the water and all of a sudden, something "pulls" at your leg.  By the time you get to shore, you realize your leg's already gone.

School starting is just like that.  By the time you realize it's official, and it's real, and you're ill-prepared, it's already begun.

All this stuff I thought I'd have time for all summer long is now undone.  All my great master plans of entertainment and activity are futile.  Besides travelling all over the place, and visiting with my family, and seeing crazy wild animals, I had this delusion that my kids would have these magical crafts and projects and activities.  That I'd turn into SuperMom and the kids would be so impressed by my creativity and initiative, that they'd leap into fantastic uber-selves, capable of art and craft and exercise and imaginative play.

They're watching, I think, Suite Life with Zach and Cody.  Possibly the least creative, least imaginative, most derivative thing on television.  I am not wowing them with my SuperMom abilities.

My leg is being chewed by a giant Great White, but that's only his appetizer.

I washed their uniforms, so at least they won't be nude on the first day.  They have shoes, and haircuts, and their summer work packets.  They won't be the neglected ones on the first day.

I, on the other hand, need to get teacher supplies and help out the PTA and sign up for  Welcome Back! and Welcome, Kindergarteners! parties.  I need to get a bunch of library books to have in the car for the hours sitting and waiting at swim practice.  I need to restock the snacks for lunches....hell, I need lunchboxes.

It's all so awful.  The kids are acting out--they're dreading the routine, the monotony, the homework just as I am.  For the last week of summer, I'm hearing things I haven't heard in weeks--I'm bored, there's nothing to do.  I don't wanna do that.  They've got an extended version of the Sunday Night Blues.  They're resisting the inevitable.  They refuse to go back into the water.

I feel for them.  We all would rather not have bathtime and bedtime and wake up time, and lunchtime dictated by bells and alarms.  We all would rather swim than study.  We all would rather not do the same drill every day.  Alas, this is life.  And there are upsides, of course--they'll see friends they literally haven't seen in weeks.  Our family becomes very isolated in the summer, and I'm sure they'll be happy to see their friends and socialize with peers.  I get to see my friends again, too.  We've all been buried in pretend, temporary summer lives, and we reemerge every fall in cooperative efforts to get these kids through school.

It's time to start setting the alarm.  To start enforcing bedtime.  To retrench the half hour of reading every day.  It's time for collared shirts (ugh) instead of swim trunks.  It's time to see what lurks out in the vast black sea.

It's gonna be scary.

The Mysterious Case of Dr. Chocolate and Mrs. Hyde

I think I may have a split personality.  I think the rift between the two identities is growing in such a way that they will be irreconcilable soon.  I need help, I think, to bridge the gap, bring the identities together so that I can survive as a single person.
Allow me to elaborate:
I, being of a singular, largely healthy brain, have recently begun to detect discrepancies in my memory, in my logic, in my actions.  During the day, I find myself very conscious of my decisions.  I eat moderately, I squeeze myself into non-elastic bound pants, I drink water over high calorie sodas.  I have eschewed alcohol for all intents and purposes during the bright, sunlit hours of summer.  I want very much to weigh less and be healthier.  I have taken up modified pilates and yoga to help strengthen my ailing back.  I have the desire, yea, the deep desire to be a strong, slim person.
However, as night falls, something truly terrible happens.  There is a darkness that creeps through my brain and corrupts it.  Completely.
In the evenings, in front of the television or even while reading my escapist fiction, something grumbles from within.  It is....my stomach.
My stomach compels me to do things my daytime self would never do.  My stomach compels me to eat hideously fattening foods.  Many of them.  Freed by the non-confining elastic of my pajamas, my evil nighttime identity consumes everything.  Yearns for chocolate chips or french fries or potato chips.   Must have junk food.  Eats voraciously, disregards all consequence for the poor soul who rises in the daylight surrounded by the crumbs of the previous eve's food orgy.
My evil nighttime self cares not for the agony of the day time creature when she rises and steps on the scale, the scale whose numbers climb in a seemingly endless increase of numbers towards what?  Whale? Rhino?
How will this stop?  How can I dig down to find the willpower to contain that nightmare creature, that shadow self of day?
What do I do?
In the evening, alone or with my hubby, a beer seems so refreshing.  A licorice straw so innocent.  A scoop of ice cream so guiltless.  He snacks without consequence.  He is in control.  I cave in to the dark side.
How does the discipline of the day go so readily by the wayside?  How do the cravings that were easily stamped out in the bright day overtake me in the dark? Why can't I keep my freaking mouth shut and stop putting food in it?
WWWWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY!??!?!?!

I need Mary Reilly.  Mary Reilly to stand in front of the pantry and hold me true to my daytime self.  A lock named Mary Reilly on the cupboards, the fridge, the liquor cabinet.  Those bastions of calories.  Those places where the dark forces grow and tempt me. I don't need a lovestruck assistant, rather the opposite.  I need a stern-faced meanie who will protect me from myself.  I need to stop eating so much.

I will continue this dangerous tango until some one can help me.  This fatal dance may well end with me as a hippo in a tutu if my daytime persona cannot regain some control over the situation.  Please, I beg of you, dear reader, help me, Mrs. Hyde, destroy.....ummmm doughnuts.

Talking to the walls

Single parents, or parents who are mostly single, rock.  It's not like this just dawned on me or anything, it's just that I don't have a lot of variety in my circle of immediate friends, and I don't see single parents doing "it all" every day.  So, I forget to think about just how hard they're working all the time.

With M gone for the week, I have been given just an amuse bouche of what life as a single parent must be.  And my bouche is not amused.

They're just relentless.  Not necessarily, bad, but relentless.  Kids NEVER stop.  Even when you desperately need them to, just for a minute, give it UP.  For one moment today, could you please please please do what is easiest for me without argument, sass, discussion or whining (and that's just from me)?
Could you just make my life easier by doing this one thing now?

It's not all the kids' fault, by any means.  My kids have been pretty good.  They can't help that they're age-appropriately programmed to watch TV and play and not want to do work.  They are doing what we want kids to do--except when we want them to unload the dishwasher, pick up the cereal pieces, take out the dog.

Sometimes, and I was thinking about this last night as S was snoring beside me in my bed.  (He's taken M's absence as some sort of Hamlet-ian opportunity to usurp the bed.)  There's just nobody to talk to.  Holy crap.  Yesterday, I visited with a friend for a couple of hours, and afterwards was kind of blissed out, and I thought, OH YEAH.  It's because I haven't talked to a grown up in FOUR DAYS.  What the hell?   How can anyone go that long without speaking Grownup?

 Discussing Phineas and Ferb as though it is the great literature of our time?  An informative lecture on Ninjago?  A thorough analysis of the most recent Lego creation?   A very detailed examination on how solar panels work?  Why boys think their junk is so fun?

All of this, ALL of this, I have done.  I haven't spoken about anything above, say the 5th grade level, in days.  Not that M and I are having deep discussions about art and science and literature when he's home.  But we ARE talking about grown up life.  About things that are curious and interesting and (relatively) important.  I can't even have a sophisticated argument without him around.  It all deteriorates into "neenerneener!  Are too!  AM not!" and "Because I SAID SO."

Nothing.  No engagement whatsoever.  It's me and these little twerps, sweet as they may be.

So, last night, S is snoring and the dog is snoring, and I'm hot.  I feel bitter, momentarily, about M dressed ever so hip, and cruising through one of the world's great cities, and I feel like picking a fight.

Nobody to fight with.

So, I lay there in the heat.  Mad.  Hot.  Throwing the covers off my body and stewing in my nightshirt about how I'm in Alabama and he's in London and the kids are just kids.

The air conditioner kicked on at some point.

"Yeah.  That's what I thought," I whisper yell at the ductwork.  "I knew it was hot in here.  Where the hell where YOU, A/C? Did you think that I wasn't going to NOTICE it was 76 degrees in here?  Where youjust going to see if you could take a few degrees off?  Really?  I didn't think so."

If you're gonna fight with some one, you better make sure you can win.

Things that go SMACK! in the night

Technically, it's not called babysitting when you're supervising your own kids.  It just feels that way. Only you're not getting paid, and you don't get to leave.  EVER.

For the first time in a long time, I'm home alone for a week with the kids.  M is livin' it up UK style.  He has an unbelievable week lined up for himself in London:  Olympic Track & Field events, soccer events, a beer festival,  Henry V at the Globe Theater, an organized archaelogical walk, and a docent-led private tour of the Tate and National Museums.

I've got swimming pools, heat, Disney Channel, and pb&j.  Not that I'm jealous.  I'm really not.  Truly.

The more money he spends on his adventure, the more I'll be able to spend on mine.  There is a karmic ledger, you know.

ANYWAY.  I haven't been home alone at night for a long time.  I'm spoiled that way.

Two nights ago, I had locked all the doors, shut all the lights, and was happily playing on my computer.  I had the dog asleep in my lap, the kids put to bed, and all was right with the world.

Until.

There was a tiny little sound behind me.  It sounded like a mash up of Vader, static, and some otherworldly sighing out of a horror movie.

It started as a tiny sound, and assumed the dog had snorfled in his sleep.  Maybe it was a whimper or a snore misheard by me.  Maybe it only sounded as if it was coming from behind me.  But no.  I'm pretty sure it was.

My fight or flight adrenaline began to flow.  I turned around quickly, and there was a dark figure crouching behind my chair, just inches from me.  It had a menacing face.  Teeth.

I screamed.  Really screamed.  Lashed out with my hands and ran.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, as I crossed the threshold to the dining room, I thought, "that was a really small murderer/rapist."

I turn around again, and there is S.  He's holding his mouth, because that's where I clocked him.  There's no blood, no swelling.  I'm shaking.  I start babbling.

So sorry.  I didn't know who it was. Shityouscaredme. Ohmygod.  I'm shaking.  So sorry.  I had no idea.  Are you okay?  I'm sorry.

He chuckles.  I mean like an evil villain chuckle.  I hear E, in an overly-alarmed voice (waaaay too late after hearing me scream) "What's going on?!?"

S looks up at me, as I'm peering at his jaw.  "I guess I had that coming."

Yes you did, son.  Yes you did.

Forecast: 52 & Damp

All my vacation stories are out of order, but you'll piece it together.  I'm going to take you back to Yellowstone now:

Yellowstone was amazing--bear and pronghorn (which are NOT deer) and elk and actual deer and wolves--we saw WOLVES and herds of bison.  We hired a private guide for our last day, and he works on the wolf restoration project in Yellowstone, so he had a radio to know exactly where the wolves were, which was fantastic, because one crossed directly in front of us:

which is funny, because you can see the people in the background looking for the wolf in the other direction. This is a crappy photo, but it was through a bug-splattered windshield and holy crap, wildlife is not cooperative. At all.

Except for this bison, who graciously consented to be part of my "Animals Doing Animal Stuff" collection of photos:

This blurry bear was wandering too close for too long along the side of a busy road.  The rangers call this loitering, and they discourage this behavior by using negative reinforcement:  they shoot loiterers in the bum with rubber bullets.  Which, since it's not my bum, is hilarious.  This bear was lumbering around, very slowly munching on stuff, and the ranger took aim, and bzing!  The bear took off running in the other direction.  I have decided rubber bullets may be the answer to my child discipline questions.

Of course, this picture of a ground squirrel type animal is perfect.  S made me take it.  It's cute, but I wish my other pictures were this clear.

 Sadly, these are the only moose we saw:  the men decided that the best way to attract moose for us to see was to put on finger antlers and make moose calls.  Which, if we were to ask a biologist, is probably the WORST way to attract moose for us to see.

The next picture is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite moment from our entire trip to Yellowstone.  One day, in the middle of the week, it was really quite warm, bordering on hot.  The rivers and streams and lakes look so inviting after a 5 mile walk.  I begged M to let us pull over and stomp in the stream some.  "Up to my ankles," I said.  "It's so refreshing," I said.  "I'm so hot," I said.  

So, indeed, we pulled over, we scrabbled down this little embankment and found ourselves all alone in this lovely bend of this beautiful stream.  I rolled up my pants, took off my shoes, and waded into the refreshing coolness.  The water is so very very clear, and the rocks in the creek bed were slick and smooth and beautiful.  Despite my tempting description of the refreshingness, M declined to come in.  E was slow getting off his shoes, but he was game for a little wade in the stream.  S was gung ho, because, of course, S is gung ho about everything.  Mostly.  He's wading around up to his knees when M encourages him to return to shore and take off his pants so they don't get wet.  (Which, as it turns out, was some fantastic advice.)

Lil' S returns to the water squealing with delight at the cool, briskly flowing water.  M was so enjoying S's display of mini-adorableness that he snapped THIS photo (that, by the way, I promised S I would NEVER publish or reproduce, so let's keep this between us) as S uttered the best last words ever spoken by a person enjoying a brisk stream:  "Ooooh!  It feels so good on your thighs!!"

Those, were, in fact his last words before flapping his arms wildly and falling completely into the river.

As you can see from this photo, the water is flowing quite strong up against the young man's Phineas and Ferb underwear.  It swiftly picked the kid up and started dragging him downstream.  The aforementioned shiny, slick and smooth rocks prevented him from getting a foothold.  And after a moment or two, he had drifted to where he could no longer stand anyway. M is scrambling along the embankments to try to get ahead of the drifting platypus-underwear-wearing kid.  E is panicking and dropping things.  I am splashing and stumbling through the water to get to him.

At some point, it became clear to me that if I was going to save my kid before he started floating down the Hayden Valley (where EVERY tourist in Yellowstone would be able to photograph our parenting failure) towards the beautiful falls we had photographed earlier in the day, I was going to have to jump in and swim.

Which is what I did.

He was actually far enough ahead of me that I had to swim for him.  I grabbed him by the collar in dramatic fashion, and dragged him to a log mired on the bank. 

It was quite a moment, one of those moments that as a parent seem to last forever in super slo-mo.  When it is impossible to calculate the number of thoughts going through your brain:

"How will I explain this to my parents?  The cops?  No one will believe that we tried to rescue him.  The people at dinner last night will recall the whisper fight we had about his $11 pasta that was untouched.  Will a   bear eat him?  How long 'til he gets hypothermia?  Does this water have flesh eating bacteria? M is never gonna forgive me.  Will this be on CNN?  Will I be the next Tan Mom neglecting my child?  Will anyone care that I was trying to enrich my child's life through travel and inadvertently let him drown? Will the headline read, 'Where's Perry?' Holy crap!  This water is freakin' cold!  Damn, that kid makes the WORST choices.  What is WRONG with him?"

As we all sat on the embankment catching our collective breath, E came along.  He brought with him our shoes and socks.  M still had S's dry pants.  He was able to redress in a dry sweatshirt from the car, his dry pants, and his dry socks and shoes.

I had dry socks.  Only dry socks.  Soaked sweatshirt, t-shirt, sports bra, pants, underwear.  The whole shebang. I wrung out my clothes as best as I could, and forced M to roll my shirt up in the window so it could air dry en route to Old Faithful.  (He protested, saying that was entirely too country to have clothes flapping outside the car.  For real?  I'm soaked in 52 degree water from neglecting my child in a stream in the middle of nowhere and the shirt outside the car is what's country?)

We went to the Old Faithful lodge for a snack before continuing on.  I literally left a trail of water drops on the floor as I walked around the lodge.  Just another reason to be happy we went home to a hot shower in a hotel room and NOT a campground.  

I clearly can't be trusted with my own kids in the wilderness.

City Mouse, Country Mouse, Rube

So, this was the summer of travel.  We dared to schlep our children across or into or through, get this:  NINE states.
Not including the state of insanity.

We trekked to Yellowstone National Park, the birthplace of outdoorsy.  A place, where we learned, a dude fell off his horse and lived for 57 days off thistles, keeping himself warm with fires made from his single unbroken eyeglass lens.  Another dude, having fallen on the wrong side of some locals, was stripped of clothing, and told that if he could escape, he could live.  The locals didn't think to look for him up under a beaver den, where his wet naked self hid until returning to safety.  The heart of bison country.  Of, literally, Purple Mountain's majesty.
We, as a family, are NOT outdoorsy.  I have seen, on occasion, my husband RUN from mosquitoes.  I have never slept in a tent that was not strung between two chairs in my grandma's family room.  I think community showers breed grossness.  I don't understand how a campsite--jammed motor home to motor home, with tents stuck in between--is relaxing, or beautiful, or at all a getaway.  It feels much more like a pre-game parking lot tailgate for college football.  On the other hand, an extended hike into the wilderness to sleep under the stars sounds lovely, but I don't think I'd be good at sharing a potty with a bear.
But the thing about Yellowstone is that EVERYONE can do it.  We woke up in our fresh hotel room, ate a portable breakfast of oatmeal and yogurt, savored a decent cup of coffee and set out in our rental car each morning.  We left before 6 each day, and saw all kinds of animals starting their day as well.  We took our kids (who did not complain!) on trails up to 5 miles long.  More than one a day, even.  We brought with us lovely bagged lunches we bought at the hotel and ate at picnic tables near streams.  Best of all, we came home in the evenings, showered in our own bathroom, put on clean clothes, returned to the lobby, enjoyed a cocktail or a local microbrew, and ate dinner with real plates, glasses and delicious food.
That's about how outdoorsy we are.  We made it work for us, though.

One thing that NO ONE can pass off is being a tourist in the city.  After a week in Chicago, it was very clear that this place once called home was now our vacation destination.  Our sensible shoes, constant checking of intersection numbers and El routes, our near desperate need for deep dish pizza were clearly those of the rube.

We were almost country mice in the country, but most definitely not city mice in the city.

And then this guy gets on the El:

Can you see him?  That's an Alabama hat and shirt.  It's also a waist-length ponytail.

This guy and his buddies had trouble getting on the train.  They were unable to determine what line they were on (red), where (south) and when (as soon as you get outta the doorway, buddy) it was going,  and where, exactly they were when they got on it (Howard).  They also thought they'd be able to walk into Wrigley in the third inning against the Cardinals.  They also thought they'd make it back to Waukegan by 4:30 that afternoon after watching the game (no way).
Maybe they only know college football?  Maybe they failed to notice it took them 2 hours to get to where they were, and it was only two hours until they were supposed to be back there?

Maybe a lot of things.  I've certainly felt lost and befuddled in places I don't know.  Really.  I have sympathy for that.

BUT, they get on the train, loud and confused and all SOUTHERN about it.  Advertising with their mouths, their poor English, their SEC-based wardrobe--posting their country mouse-ness on their bodies.

How MUCH money, exactly,  does Alabama make on clothing?  There must be entire city-sweatshops in China dedicated to sewing closets full of University of Alabama/Roll Tide gear.  Never have I seen people so eager to broadcast an affinity for a university which they may/may not have attended.  And, for all of you alumni out there, I hope this guy did not attend.

What is the deal?  I get that there are not a ton of retail options down here, but seriously. It's ok to shop for clothing at someplace besides the grocery store.  Houndstooth does NOT go with everything, despite what you have been told.  Not every accessory needs to be Tide-related (ladies, I'm looking at those elephant earrings I see everywhere). Not everyone needs to know you're from here--especially if you're going to act rube-ishly.  Do your state a favor.

At least wear an Ol' Miss shirt.