"And Now, I Am the Master..."

In 1977,
I was six
(Egads! For-ev-er, ago!)
and my dad took my whole family to the movie theater (a big treat, as we very rarely went to the movies) to see this new movie that had just come out, Star Wars.  I had no idea what this movie was about, I vaguely remember Dad sitting in his plush movie seat with this excited smile on his face and a big bag of popcorn in his lap. I sat between my mom and my little sister and squirmed in my seat as the lights went down.

Then, that, now all-too-familiar, music cracked the silence and captured my instant attention. Seconds later, as that huge Imperial Star Cruiser just kept coming and coming and coming across the screen, my mouth fell open in awe and it stayed open until the credits rolled at the end of the film.

In some ways, my mouth is still hanging open in awe. At that moment, I became a born-again Science Fiction Fan (my love was later cemented by a bad TV showing of Enemy Mine but that is another story.)

Star Wars was unlike anything that came before it - it revolutionized the movie industry and energized an entire generation. Almost everyone, around my age, has a similar story of the first time that they saw Star Wars. (And, for some people, the dozens and dozens of times that they stood in line to see it - at the movie theater, this was before VCRs and DVD players. :) )

It's hard to explain exactly what the draw is to this movie. The special effects were undreamed of when it came out - it quite literally blew everything else away - and the characters were and are unforgettable.  Those things are all true, but it's hard to describe that "other" thing that it has. What is that attraction that won't let me go? It does have something to do with the first time awe of childhood innocence. But, once, after I'd grown into an adult and was discussing the draw of Star Wars with my mom, who is not such a big sci-fi fan, even she, full of awe, replied (in reference to herself and my dad,)

"A (-Girl), WE'D never seen anything like that, either!" 

The "older" (but newer to me) prequel Star Wars will never have the charm or the draw that the "newer" (older to me) middle ones do. (There's some "New Math" for ya- 1,2,3 Star Wars are really 4,5,6. While, 4,5,6 Star Wars are really 1,2,3. Please, let's not even discuss where 7,8,9 fit in. My head might explode.)

The Star Wars Trilogy spanned my entire childhood -  the last one came out in May 1983 when I was 12, that's six years that I lived in anticipation of the next movie and the next development in the story line. That's a long time in the life of a child.

(I remember sitting in elementary school 

and some little boy telling me that 

Darth Vader was really Luke Skywalker's father.

 I refused to believe it -  

no, that was too horrible to even think about. <shiver>) 

Later, in college, we studied Star Wars in my Mythology class and that class became one of my favorites of  my college career and helped explain to me why that movie has made such an impact on our collective psyche - it is, perhaps, the perfect myth.

Which brings me to today, today we - Middle Child and I - ordered his "big boy bed."
He is so excited, but not about the bigger bed.
(I can't wait on that! He needs to get out of MY bed.)
He is so excited about the "Star Wars Bed," as he calls it.
He was explicit that it have "Stormtroopers," on it.
Got it.
Comforter,sheets,curtains and Stormtrooper lamp, ordered.

( I was so surprised, I asked Oldest Child,

"Since when 

are Darth Vader 
and Stormtroopers cool? 

They're the bad guys. 

I thought we didn't like them."

He sighed with 15 yo angst and answered,

"Mom, that's 'cause you're a chick. Darth Vader has ALWAYS been cool." 

My husband agrees with him.
Oh sorry, my bad. <sarcasm>
Guys are weird.)

AND, for Halloween, we found Middle Child a Stormtrooper costume. He CAN NOT wait.

And, me either -  Star Wars has arrived for real in the A-Girl household!

" <mechanical breath> Luuuke! I am your fa-ther!"

Do Superman Capes Come in “Horse" Size?

Okay, so today Horse and I had a great ride. We went through our normal paces and then, as I was holding him steady in front of the burn pit, “See, it’s just smoke! Yeah, it moves and smells bad but smoke does not eat horses, I promise,” and, as I was studying his ears for the first sign of BOLT! while we were at the fence line watching the EVIL riding lawn mower, “This loud, funny thing only eats grass!” but before, we circled, circled, circled, circled, circled, circled that strange little bridge that MOVES (egads!) under his feet, I had myself a moment.

You know that moment when suddenly the clouds part and the world makes sense for just 3 tiny seconds. But, oh, those three tiny seconds make the rest of the shitty day/week/month/year worth it? Yeah, one of those moments.

I was thinking to myself, 

why do I do all of this, this constant training and constant exposure of Horse to new and different and scary things? It’s ‘cause I want a SUPERHORSE. A horse that can go and do anything, anywhere. I  don’t want to push him through his fears, I want him to have enough confidence to overcome his fears.

It was at that moment that it was as if God said to me,

Yep, that’s what I’ve been doing with you. It has seemed like you’ve spent your whole life waiting to live but I've wanted you to be confident, to overcome your fears. To be a SUPER A-GIRL!

You know, as forty approaches, I’ve been overcome with this disappointment that I’m not further.  I had such plans and such expectations for where I’d be at this point in my life and, instead, I’ve just been overwhelmed with how hard I’ve had to struggle to just get this far. (See previous few posts.) An abusive childhood, a pitiful first marriage which was a direct result of said crappy childhood, an immune system that was TOAST, also due to said childhood, ETC (and it is etcetera, child abuse is the gift that just keeps on giving) -I'd spent 30 something years in chaos.

I’ve spent the last, nearly, 10 years pulling myself out of it. I’m proud of myself. I survived HELL, beat it back and learned to THRIVE on the other side of it. But, I look up and where “I wanted to be” seems so far away. I feel like I am perpetually behind.  Then, I have a moment like today, in which I suddenly realize that I have not been ignored or unloved through it all. I am not alone and “behind.”  I am exactly where I am supposed to be at exactly the right time.

"Not all who wander are lost."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

In order to have a SUPERHORSE (or anything else SUPER-family, career, life, etc.) I will have to be a SUPERHUMAN. I will have to be emotionally fit. I have never been that before, at all. Today, I am much closer to that ideal. And, it is because I have taken the time that it takes, I have done the work, I have become much more confident, but it is a process that has taken YEARS.

Forty is super nifty in that, if you’ve fought the hard fight, it can be like a plateau from which you stop and survey how high you’ve climbed.

And, I love the air up here!

Sedona, Arizona

My sweet new husband gave me a “safe place” to dwell and, from there, I could get down to the dirty business of healing. Sometimes, I wonder if he really knew what he was getting into. He didn’t, thank God.


I spent nearly 2 years in therapy dealing with abuse from my childhood, I went to Dallas to see an environmental health doctor and finally began to see improvements in my chronic health issues. But, of course, things were falling apart in other ways. It seemed to just be one stress after another. It felt like it was 30-some-odd years of “hard.”


That much “hard” + my very sensitive "artist personality" had created a sort of victim mentality. I was always waiting on someone to save me from whatever horrible situation I was in, to save me from myself. During the worst part I was depressed, anxious, panic-driven, sick, in pain, overwhelmed, suicidal - the list goes on.


It was time for a LIFE BREAK. My grandfather had left me some money when he’d died the year before. There were tons of things we could of done with the money, probably should have done. But this just felt so important, I needed to do something for me. I needed to separate myself from my life, to get some space, to process - to take a vacation, alone.


(Thank God for a husband who understood, who took a whole work-week off  to watch the kids -a 3yo and a 1 yo - by himself so that I could go, who sucked it up and tried to understand why I didn‘t want him to go.
That man has no idea what he did, how that helped me to heal.
How he said to me, in so many ways, “You are worth it.”
He’s told me before, “I am the first person in your life who has really loved you.”
In most ways, he's right.)


I chose Sedona, Arizona. I needed to take myself back there. To give that gift to myself. My husband had given it to me, 6 years before - the gift of Arizona - but now I needed to be able to give to myself because, of course, it is not the place, it is the state of being.


“Arizona” lives because I do.


I needed to touch that, to smell it, to believe in my own healing.


On the plane, I made a list (I like lists) of all the things that had led me to that point. It went something like this:

• Childhood abuse
• Crappy first marriage (11 ½ years)
• Post Partum depression with first child
• Chronic, chronic, chronic illness
• Years of fruitless visits to doctors
• Years of anti-pain meds
• 10 years of antidepressants
• Divorce
• Remarriage (Even “good” stress is stress and, let‘s face it, it ain‘t all good -if it was, it wouldn‘t be real.)
• Unhappy step-kids, unhappy Oldest Child
• Mold poisoning
• 6 weeks in Dallas at the Environmental Health Center  (I’d been so sick that I “lived” outside, in a play tent, in my parent’s backyard for a while.)
• Healing from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
• Continuing to live with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
• Therapy for abuse
• Confronting my abuser
• Losing my family of origin
• Custody battle, that I lost, over Oldest Child who was 10 at the time.
• Cross-country move while 8 months pregnant, then awful post partum anxiety ( I was the web moderator for a yahoo group - PTSD After Childbirth, http://www.angelfire.com/moon2/jkluchar1995/ - for over a year, it’s a good sight. Labor, delivery and post partum - they can actually trigger the abuse - are not always warm, fuzzy moments- no matter what Hallmark would like you to believe.)
• Cross-country move while 7 months pregnant, then post partum difficulty
• Middle Child’s “dash” to the hospital, at 17 months, via ambulance, because he quit breathing, turned blue and crashed- I’d never seen an asthma attack before, BAD MOMMY-1 night in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, 1 night on the regular pediatric floor- thank God for 911 and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

The list looked small compared to the chaos that it had created. I realized that almost everything was really rooted in the abuse and it had all fallen apart  (or refused to grow) from there. Dealing with that was the key.


I also made a list of the things that I was willing to sacrifice, really sacrifice, for. What were the things that were the most important to me?


   1) My family -
        husband, kids
   2) Horses-
       (stop limiting yourself, do what you love)


I flew into Phoenix on Monday, drove an hour north to Sedona and then spent the rest of the day checking out the place, I went on a 7 hour horse back ride through the Prescott National Forest on Tuesday, I met my very close friend, Bea, there on Wednesday and we hiked around Sedona the rest of that day, all day Thursday and until time to drive back to Phoenix on Friday.

Prescott National Forest

"Tailings" of an old gold mine-Prescott National Forest

Shag Juniper tree

When I got back to the ATL airport at home and found my car in airport parking, I put the key in the ignition and then I broke into tears - I just sat in my car and cried like a baby.


I’d done it.


The woman who’d been so sick that she could NOT live inside her house and then barely been able to leave her next house, who couldn't move a lot of days before that, who’d had panic attacks so badly that she couldn’t drive to the next town, who’d thought that grief would never leave her, who’d felt, for years, totally victimized by her life and the world in general, had planned and executed an away-from-home trip by herself. 
She’d decided on a place to stay, bought plane tickets, gotten in her car and found the airport, flown, rented a BIG truck, gone on an all day horse back ride by herself with just the trail boss, stayed away from home, been alone, been with other people, navigated in unfamiliar territory and come home.


I’d done it. Alone. I couldn’t believe it. I was overwhelmed with my own power. My victimhood died that day.


My list of things that I've learned:

• No one, except you, can save you from anything and nothing gets better unless you make it get better.
• In order to heal, you have to get to the ROOT of the problem and deal with that. Everything else is just Band-Aids on symptoms until the root is removed.
• I am strong. Anybody and anything that I will face in my life from here on out, I’ve faced meaner. I won’t back down. I may sit and cry for a while but this chick gets back up.

I've changed. (And, yet, I am more me, now, than I have ever been before.)


My Arizona trip wasn’t what caused the changes, that trip was a symptom of the changes that were already happening,  but it is a touchstone, a time that I can look back to and say, It (I) changed, then.


Once I got home, I found a horse trainer, who was doing what I’d been wanting to do for 10 years, and I hired her. I bought myself a horse and a truck (bigger than the one I'd rented in Sedona :) ) and a horse trailer. I’d spent years cleaning out stalls in exchange for riding lessons and riding/training other people’s horses because I wouldn’t make horses a priority. I was always trying to make it be a non-issue for the people around me, because it cost money, because it took up my time, because it seemed like a guilty pleasure. I let that go and made it a priority. This is part of who I am and I quit pretending that it wasn’t.


I got really okay with the fact that the people in my life need me, that I am an adult and that I am responsible for my choices. That life isn’t just happening to me, it is my life and I am creating it. Life is so much more fun, now.


While in Arizona, I bought myself a metal war shield (it’s really cool, the base of it is an old Pontiac Chieftain hub cap, circa 1950s) made by a Navajo warrior, David Draper, after he’d returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.


To me, it is our sign of battles waged and won, it is reminiscent of the scars that remain in a heart, scars that can not truly be known by anyone else, other than the bearer. It is a reminder that even after the physical battles are all won, you often go home with a broken body, a broken heart and a broken mind and then the harder job of healing has to occur.


Anyone can lie around wounded,
anyone can give up and die on the bed.
It takes a real warrior to heal
and get up, to have the guts to live again.


(Or, sometimes, to learn to live for the first time.)

The copper wiring is made to represent the locks of the warrior's horse’s tail
-locks that the warrior would pull out and hang on his shield before battle.
How cool is that?

Favorite True Story:

When I got divorced I adopted a “divorce song,”  There is No Arizona, by Jamie O'Neal. Maybe you remember it, it was a Country #1 Hit in 2000.


My divorce was final in 2002 and that song came blaring out of the radio and hit me in the gut. I could identify so much with the sentiment - he lies, she wants to believe.  My ex-husband was the best liar I’ve ever met and it didn’t hurt that I WANTED to believe him. He was also a youth pastor/pastor and very very very very good at “social”- one sort of guy away from church, another sort of guy at church.  Everyone, who meant anything to me, wanted to believe. It was a lot like living with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Nothing in my past had prepared me for dealing with this, for dealing with the truth about my situation.


After 11 ½ years, after I'd finally gotten up enough guts to slink out the door and leave, I knew that the “good one” would be the one who would show up to pick up our son, the one who would stand on my front porch and smile, the one who would want me back. I COULD NOT let myself forget what it was like to really live with him, what it was like to live with BOTH of them - Dr J. and Mr. H.  

                    There is no Arizona,

                    No Painted Desert, 

                    No Sedona.

                    And, if there was a Grand Canyon

                    She could fill it up with the lies he’s told her.

                    But they don’t exist, those dreams he sold her

                    She’ll wake up and find

                    There is no Arizona

                    -There is No Arizona, Jamie O’Neal

A-Girl, I’d tell myself, there is NO Arizona.


I bought the album (no, I bought the CD, hahaha, we used to buy “albums”) and listened to the song over and over, I even bought a bottle of Arizona Tea and left it, unopened, on my microwave so that I would NOT forget, There is NO Arizona. Hammer it into your head, there is NO Arizona. It does not exist!


About a year later, when I met my now husband, that bottle was still on my microwave. I’d long since given up on love, on a future, on anything more than surviving day to day. I’d met and been out with several guys. So? I just wanted to be married, to be committed, to be working toward something with someone. But not just anyone, someone who was worth the work, someone who wanted it as much as I did and that guy just didn’t seem to be out there, at all.


I never (ever) regretted leaving my ex-husband but I was “the marrying kind” and I missed marriage, or marriage the way that I wanted to believe that it could be.


When THAT guy walked through the door of my cousin’s bridal shower, hope walked in. I didn’t know it yet but there it was. It wasn’t perfect but it was beautiful.


It happened fast. We met, fell in love and were planning our wedding in a few months time. The whole thing was sorta flying by so fast that I was a little numb. If he saw my Arizona Tea bottle on the microwave, he never asked and I never told him.


Then, one day, we were sitting at McDonalds, discussing plans and I heard him say,

“I found the engagement ring in Sedona 

and I want us to fly out there to see it. 

So, we’re gonna fly out to Sedona, Arizona 

and then we’re going to go to the Painted Desert 

and to see the Grand Canyon…”

The world stopped turning.
The color drained from my face.
He’s an engineer and not always very intuitive so I must have looked BAD.
I know I’d stopped chewing.
He grew silent and studied me,

“A-Girl, what’s wrong?"

I gulped, swallowed my food and, in a tiny voice, I managed to squeak out,

“There is no Arizona.”

And, then I explained to him about my song.

When I finished he looked at me and said,

“Baby, 

there IS an Arizona 

and I’m gonna prove it to you.”

(I still cry.)

There IS an Arizona, I've been there.

And yes, we bought the ring. 

Are you kidding me? 

I’d have bought that thing even if I’d HATED it. 

I don’t, I love it, but it wouldn’t have mattered.
Not one bit. :)

(Oh, and we had the song played at our wedding.)

Ding, Order’s Up!

Sometimes, I remind myself of a short order cook, the way I sling orders around: “Clean that up, stop hitting your brother, get out of the kitchen.”

If there were an order that I could give and  have people, in general, actually execute, it’d be, “Stop lying to yourself.”

"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others."                                                                     -Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We all do it. Most of the time we do it about small things- “I eat enough healthy stuff, I’m not dangerous when I talk  (text!)  on the cell phone and drive, my kids know I love them (well, that one’s not so small), I don’t really need to go to the dentist."  Because the lies that we tell are small then the consequences of telling them are often also small or are not noticed until the years of telling them compound on top of one another, “Yes, Mrs. A-Girl, you will need two root canals done in the course of a week…”  (I'm sorta living in fear of that statement, right now. :) )

When those lies are HUGE then the repercussions of them can be completely personality encompassing. They can, literally, swallow up your entire life with their toxicity.

For years I lied to myself. It’s really not that bad. I can’t do any better. I’m fine.
Lies, lies, lies. It was that bad, I could do better-much better- and I wasn’t fine, not on any level.

I remember the day that I typed on my computer the words, “I was sexually abused. I was sexually abused. I was sexually abused.” I looked at those tiny black words on that bright white screen and wanted to throw up. I couldn’t make myself and that person BE the same person. It was too surreal. I knew it was the truth but I’d been denying it for so long, to myself especially, that I couldn't make my self-concept line up with what I knew was the truth.

I’d been staring at the facts for years, been staring at the memories, been staring at the chaos for my whole life but refusing to do the math. If you’d have given me that same math about another person I’d have been able to do it in a heartbeat, I’d have known immediately what was wrong but to apply it to myself short-circuited all my reasoning ability.

I  would remember an abusive moment from my childhood, say to myself, That was weird. <shiver> Ooooh! Stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, No, really, I'm fine…have myself an all out panic attack trying to stop the emotions but never actually say to myself, that was abusive.  It wasn’t until I actually read the books about abuse, heard them describe stuff that had HAPPENED TO ME and heard them call it abuse before I could say, Oh, yeah. That did suck, didn’t it?

OH, HELLO!!!!!

I literally had to make a choice to “go there,” I had to decide to let myself fall into that dark pit and not know if I’d survive to climb back out again. It was, without a doubt, the hardest thing that I’ve ever done. I’m been through some shit, this was the shittiest.

 I’m not talking about surviving the abuse; I’m talking about healing from it.

The truth will set you free 

but first it will make you miserable.

~ Jamie Buckingham

Survival is a thing that you do with your eyes “shut,” you learn to disassociate (a fancy word that means “to leave,” or to “cut yourself off”) from the pain. It just hurts too bad for the brain to even "look at" the trauma or the repeated trauma. Honestly, if you've never done this, it's gonna be really hard for you to wrap your head around this concept but it's a very real coping mechanism.

When this begins in childhood, the "not seeing" (and truly, not understanding, no child can categorize abuse in his or her brain) can cause catastrophic personalty disconnects.

Most people who’ve been traumatized learn the survival technique of dissociation on some level -if they don’t, they don’t survive- and then, often times, they continue the behaviors associated with dissociation for their entire lives.

If they hurt, they leave or separate themselves from the perceived cause-either in crappy relationship skills or by eating (or not eating) or in addictions or in what I call “willful not knowing,” also known as denial. They become absolute professionals at instigating whatever warped action or non-action that it takes to dull the perceived pain or threat of pain.

I was one of those people, I would not see the truth, even in other relationships, because my mind was so clouded over by my refusal to perceive the truth in this area. I was a pro at not seeing what was right in front of me. (My first husband must of thought I was STUPID with a capitol STU!)

Healing from the pain is a thing that you have to do with your eyes “open.”  You have to acknowledge the pain and embrace it. OH HOLY HELL, THAT HURTS. It sears with a pain that is indescribable.

When I finally got up the guts to confront my victimizer (and I did it via the telephone, I did not have the courage to stand in the same room with him) I sank to the floor and I literally felt pain out beyond my toes.  I hurt so badly that my body couldn’t contain it all.  And, it didn’t stop there, it hurt for years.

Survival hurts beyond belief; healing hurts in whole new ways.

It’s worth it.
Because there is freedom on the other side of that pain.
Freedom, like you have never known before.

I’ve resisted writing a blog for a while now because there was no honest way to say, “These are my thoughts,” without including these experiences on some level and I DO NOT want to bash the people involved. Truly, from what I know about my victimizer’s childhood and his father’s childhood, the finger pointing would never stop. It would just continue on down the line of generations until we got back to the original people.

We’re all broken.
Every last damn one of us.
It hurts to be human.

I say all of this, now, because I’ve been there (and fought my way to "here.")

I’ve learned that, without a doubt, the worst person to lie to is yourself. You do it because it seems like it is the only way that you can survive the pain in your life but there comes a time to move past the pain, a time for truth, and the only way that you can truly thrive in your life is to stop the lies.

Thriving is so much better than just surviving.

And, I’ve learned that the truth, no matter how ugly it may be, really does set you free and in ways that you couldn't even comprehend while you were a prisoner to the lies.

Once your eyes are opened to the truth it is almost impossible to go back to sleep. That is a life skill - to stay" awake" in painful situations- that is invaluable.

So, listen to your own truth.

It won’t be something new or unexpected, there is a voice inside your head already saying it. Stop doing everything in your power to shut it up. Sit down and listen, really listen, grieve however much you need to grieve and then do WHATEVER it takes to fix the problem. Fix it once and for all so that you can leave it behind. Stop letting your avoidance of that ugly little (or big) truth run your life.  Inside of you is a you that is desperate to heal but you have to get out of her way.

I wish someone would have said this to me while I was still wandering around, willfully blind to my own truth, and I would like to believe that I would have listened but that could be...a lie. :)

None who have always been free 

can understand the 

terrible fascinating power of 

the hope of freedom 

to those who are not free.

~ Pearl S. Buck

Extend Finger, Tilt Head Down

 Today, I was driving behind a motorcycle. I noticed that, when other motorcycles approached him in the on-coming lanes, all of the bikers extended the arms closest to one another and pointed at the ground. I assume, this was a show of “Biker Solidarity” otherwise they were pointing at the pavement and, I think, in effect, saying,

“There it is, it’s hard, DON’T fall on it.”  

(We also pulled up next to a gang of bikers at a stop light. Every last one of them was well past 60 and respectable. I smiled to myself, thinking of how different that was from my very early childhood when a gang of motorcyclists was enough to set my sister to crying, my mother to freeze in nervous anticipation and my dad to fidgeting like he was back in a rice paddy in Vietnam - he’d chew his lip and stare at them, until they’d roared off - Vietnam was not kind to him, but that is another story.  I rolled down my 3 yo’s window so that he could wave at the Grandpa Bikers and thought, Wow, how time changes things. )

This reminds me of the “Two Finger Wave,” that I use in my pick-up truck. Thumb hooked around the steering wheel, raise first two fingers at another passing truck,

“Hey dude, yeah, it‘s a good thing 

this thing came with running boards 

or I‘d never be able to climb up in here!” 

 (Perhaps, you’ve never seen it as it takes place ABOVE the heads of the passengers in most generic cars. :) )

This wave is similar, but of somewhat lower intensity, than the “Truck-Nod.” It’s that nod that we give one another - mouth set firmly in a non-smile, quick nod of the neck in the direction of the other truck, eyes quickly averted back to the road. This is usually given after one truck has waited on another truck to execute some tricky maneuver,

“Respect to you, my brotha, 
I KNOW that trailer can be a bitch to back up.”

Which got me to thinking: I think that all of us of the forty “persuasion” should have a hand sign, like a signal that says, “I, too, remember parachute pants and big hair.” I was thinking that we’d all execute the downward head tilt, followed by one finger extended toward whatever part of us is falling apart, at the moment. (Which finger you want to use would be left up to personal preference. :)  ) For me, that’d mean, head tilt toward the ground, pointer finger extended toward the wrinkles between my eyes.

We’d start a new trend, youtube would light up with videos of middle-aged folks doing these strange little movements at one another, they’d discuss conspiracy theories on both Fox News and CNN - it’d also be good practice for the next phase of our lives, in which we complain about our physical ailments to arbitrary people on the subway.  Or, we’d just effectively embarrass our kids. A win-win situation, either way, if you ask me. I’m open to suggestions.

Iza Poet and Didn’t Neeven Know It!

For a long time I was embarrassed by my southern accent. Not at all whenever I was “home,” at home I’d gladly drop back into it like an easy chair at the end of a long hot day, but if we ever left the Southeast then I tried very hard to drop my flat i’s and pick up that non-regional dialectic that says I’m from somewhere and nowhere all at the same time.

As the years have passed I’ve come to be really proud of the way I talk. My accent says, I’m from somewhere. I have a history and a place that is unique to me. And damn it, I know all about sweet tea (and sweet corn bread and country ham!) And, in a world that is getting more and more homogenized ever day, that is saying something.

Also, the accent, in general, changes the deeper south you go and as you travel from one state to another-something that Hollywood has never figured out nor ever really gotten right. We do NOT all sound the same. It also changes depending on your history- in my home town there is what I call the “hill-billy” accent and the “blue-blood” accent (they drop their r's and add an “a,”  “Mu-tha,(mother) could you please ask bru-tha, (brother) to pass the bu-da (butter)?”-yeah, I can hear it in my head, it's spelling it that's the problem.)  Usually, their people have had money somewhere along the line.

Yeah, I have the hill-billy one.

You’d think that a woman with an English degree would try very hard to be correct when it came to her language but nah, man. This is like poetry, it’s out-loud fun,  messin’ with words.

I mean really, what we do to the vowels of words is amazing. It’s messed up a hundred times since Sunday, but it is seriously just a whole lot of fun to say these jacked-up words. The words take on a rhythm and a cadence all their own as we drawl them out. 

“Hey, Baby! Did you want to watch some Tv?" 

can be plumb beautiful and twisted, at the same time, as it comes off my tongue.

What we do to cuss words is even more joyous and they can mean a thousand different things depending on how we stretch them out and where we put the emphasis.

"Shit!" means basically,

“Ow! I dropped that big hammer 

on my toe and it hurt!”

"Sheee-at!" means, that's impressive, like,

“Sheeee-at, Son, that is one 

big-ass bass boat!”

(“Son” in this context does NOT necessarily refer to one’s offspring. It can be anyone of the male gender to whom the speaker is speaking. We also have a vocabulary that is unique to the region that you are in. For instance, in my hometown, “Pespi“ could be a correct answer to the question, “What kind of Coke do you want?” )

You get the picture.

 My most favorite is one that I heard my dad say, I think pertaining to a piece of machinery that he was working on, most probably our car - 

“Hellfire and damnation!”

What you will still not hear (very loudly, anyway) is the F-word. In fact, it wasn’t until I took a trip to Philadelphia as an adult that I heard that one in gloriously loud real life, as opposed to at the movies.

There I was, smack dab in the middle of Philadelphia- tall buildings, art museums, the steps Rocky ran up in his victory “jog”- and all I could do was stare at the guy in front of me on the sidewalk talking on his cell phone because he was dropping the F-bomb like he was a WWII fighter pilot. I mean, he was doing some serious damage. I kept looking around at the people on the street, wondering who was gonna turn him in to the Social Police, but they were completely non-plussed - nobody was staring at him or even making eyes at one another, they acted just exactly like they heard this kind of language everyday at the dinner table. Maybe, they did.  I didn’t.

Now, truth be known, I’ve dropped that bad-boy a time or two myself and, while it feels quite satisfactory, I never can quite get over the feeling that some Aunt Bea wannabe is gonna walk by and bop me on the head with her big purse.  There are some things that small town USA just won’t let you get away with.

I’ve never quite figured that one out-they will PAY money to take themselves (and sometimes, their kids) to see a movie in which everything on god’s green earth is done and said but don’t you even THINK about doing it or saying it on the sidewalk outside of the courthouse.

No, siree!

Hollywood can get away with it but you, my native son (or daughter), can not.