There were a lot of things that caught me off guard when I first left the confines of my little farm town and moved to the big(ish) city of Cleveland.
Walk signs were one. It seems city kids put a lot of trust into a little sign to tell them when to walk. We unsophisticated country folk are so dumb and uneducated that instead of looking at a little box with christmas lights in it, we just LOOK TO SEE IF ANY CARS ARE GOING TO HIT US. It is simple, but effective. But by all means, city kids, walk when the white man tells you to walk.
Another is water. Everyone in the city seems to think that anything not out of a plastic bottle is poison. Like unless faucet water goes through a Brita filter, it causes instant and incurable death by murder. I grew up drinking old-egg smellin' sulfer water out of a 30 yr old hose - my wife throws out water if it has been sitting out for more than an hour. How do city kids think people survived before Aquafina? Why do they assume that everything will kill them? Water is a billion years old and people are however old Andy Rooney was - we've lived this long, suck it up.
But perhaps nothing was as confusing as trying to make plans.
There are so many decisions - and no one is every happy. Do we want to go to happy hour? Dinner? After hours? Do you want to drink beer? Wine? Martinis? Do you want to dance? Drink? Get a table? Are we going to eat? Just appetizers? Tapas?
WHAT THE HELL ARE TAPAS.
In the country - we just drank. That was it. We would literally get a case of beer, drive out to the country and park on some road that no one ever drove down and get hammered. Or we'd find an old barn and drink in there. There were almost no decisions to make. Everyone wanted to get hammered. Everyone drank Busch Light. It was just about finding the easiest spot to combine the two.
And when you live in the country - finding a place to drink can be as easy as just crossing the street.
9 comments:
We just did it out by the lake, and by "it" I do mean everything. Screw, drink, smoke, smoke some choke and choke some smoke. Those were the good old days.
AND, have you seen those crosswalk signs that have the countdowns?!
Like, the little green man isn't enough, you need a digital clock to tell you when, exactly, he'll be gone. Better time your pace correctly! Wouldn't want to have to keep your eyes on the traffic!
Tapas bars are how people with speech impediments describe strip joints.
You're welcome.
Hillarious and True... I love me some good old minerally Tap water!
It's slightly ironic that Busch Light is so close to being canned/bottled water. Large Louie
Come on be honest.... you cow-tipped too!
The walk signs crack me up. You'd never see people wait for them in Chicago. However, in Seattle, they actually will stop you from crossing if it doesn't say walk. No joke!
We liked to steal our beer and smokes from ourn parents and head out the old logging roads. You had to choices for type of beer, bottle or can? Don't forget to wipe the grease off since it's been in the truck's toolbox
You think you were confused? Try the opposite and move to a small town when you're from the big city!
Why the hell are all these strangers waving at me? And gunshots down the street don't mean gang violence, they mean that our neighbor Cletus McHeeHaw is having a hoe-down and everyone brings their favourite firearm. Everyone in the place has slept with/been married to/is related to everyone else in some sort of way...the gene pool is more like a gene puddle.
That was hard for this city girl to handle. Took me, oh, at least five years to get used to it. I've lived in said small town for six.
Even now the sound of a rooster crowing weirds me out. Like I'm an extra in 'Babe' or something.
That's hard for a city girl to swallow.
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