As if the hair thing wasn’t bad enough, I’m bored here in Atlanta. I spent the whole evening watching a Lingo marathon and I don‘t even understand how to play it. I did go out for a short while when I read about a photo exhibit featuring pictures of children wanting to be adopted. I slapped a few of my kid’s pictures there and came home. I’m sure they’d appreciate the chance at a good home. I drove all the way to Atlanta for this?! Hell, if I wanted to sit around all day and do nothing, I could have stayed home. I can’t believe NONE of South’s friends have called and asked me to hang out. I mean, I know a lot of his friends are in prison, some in the witness protection program and a couple are in rehab, but all I ever hear about is “Southern hospitality.” Then I get down here and find out y’all aren’t hospitable at all. If Mike was up North at my place, my neighbors would all be calling him and asking him to come over……and babysit. If they were going to their AA meetings, then out for a drink, they’d invite South…..to babysit. And if we went to a GA meeting then off to bingo–we all know it’s not gambling if it’s done in the name of the Lord–we wouldn’t let him sit home alone. We’d have him babysitting. But fine. Be that way.
After supper, I went out to load up on candy so I could blame my depression on chemical imbalances, and drown my sorrows in more sugar and diet Pepsi. I followed some po’ chick and her dirty little brats into Publix. I watched all misty eyed as the mom spit on her finger and wiped the one boy‘s face, then spit on her finger again and fixed the other little boy‘s hair. She spit once again to clean a little bit of dog poo off her shoes. Sigh. Only a woman can truly understand the versatility of a good spit.
Then I saw another woman with a kid standing in her grocery cart. The kid was throwing the items out of the cart as quickly as his mother was putting them in. She kept saying, “Honey, we don’t do that. We don’t throw things.” I kept thinking, “Slap. His. Ass. Already.“ I used to wonder why scientists insisted on cloning smart people. Now I know it’s because the dumb people are capable of multiplying at high rates of speed, all on their own. Unfortunately.
I drove my Hoveround into the store, and some kid yelled, “Hey! Look at the fat lady!” Mowing him down while yelling “stock up on tissues and hand cream, pimple face. You’re gonna need it,” didn’t give me the sense of elation that it usually does.
The bratty, dirty kids and moms with a hopeless air about them just deepened my sense of homesickness, so when I came back to South’s place, I decided to sit outside on the front stoop and look at the stars. There were three things wrong with that plan: you can’t sit outside anywhere at night in Atlanta, South doesn’t have a front stoop and there are no stars down here!!
But I’m not going to sit here and mope anymore. I’ve snooped through all of South’s shit, and still I yearn for intelligent activities. I’m tossing his grill into the trunk of my Rio, and I’m going to drive around until I see trailers because where there are trailers, there are trailer trash. My people. Like the Muslims returning to Mecca, I, too, must return to my own kind before I wither and die. Holy shit, I feel like E.T. I feel like Dorothy. I feel like snooping through South’s financial papers one more time, and then I’ll leave. Who knew one person could have so much credit card debt?
