March 2nd, 2005
A Place in the Country
Hmmm…. I know there’s something I haven’t done in a few weeks. Something involving the internet and prattling on and on about the minor occurrences in my life. Wait, do I have a website?!? I can’t remember.
“Hey, how can you be unsure if you have a website, when you’re obviously in the process of updating that website right now?”
Yes, thank you, my analytical friend. That intro was my way of saying “It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here.”
First I was busy helping Steph’s family move up to Virginia.
Also, I’ve been admiring my new metaphorical badge of honor, losing myself in its metaphorical sheen, and lovingly applying metaphor polish to it.
“What badge of honor?” you ask.
Why, the one I received last Saturday when Steph’s grandma said to me. “Bob, I thought you were a city boy! I was wrong.”
The reason she said this was because one of the last things left to go up on the moving truck was James’ go-cart and I couldn’t tell if there was enough room for it just by looking. Instead I walked the length of it, toe-to-toe. Then I got up on the truck and did the same thing in the remaining space. Grandma Brown saw me do this and, according to her, city boys don’t measure things like that.
“My daddy used to measure things like that,” she told me.
Ha ha! You hear that? That’s how her daddy used to do it.
That is a compliment of the highest caliber. I mean, who wants to be a city boy? Oh sure, if you’ve ever needed to know what wine goes with what cheese or what time Will & Grace comes on, it’s nice to have one around. But, overall, city boys are useless. Everybody knows it.
I was born and raised in “the city.” (Well, technically, the suburbs. But people from the country would call it “the city,” since it was less than half-an-hour from “town.” “Town” of course being a Wal-Mart.) But I may have been saved from becoming a city boy, because, as Steph points out, my family clearly belongs in the country. Apparently there was some sort of mix-up at the place where they assign families to their correct living conditions, because we all currently live among city-folk.
I guess this means that, somewhere off a dirt road, in between the double-wides, broken-down cars, and dilapidated barns, there is a spotless beige home, sporting a brightly colored flag for whatever holiday is coming up, with a professionally-manicured front lawn with a pink flamingo planted neatly in the middle.
There live the city people that accidentally got our spot in the country.
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