Part of the reason I started my Twitter account and this blog is because I find myself, more often than not, seeing/doing things that make me say “Oh yeah, it’s the South”.
Let’s be honest - this place is the most wonderful, beautiful place in the world. It’s filled with the most respectable hospitality, the thickest accents and the absolute BEST food (times infinity). Can I get an Amen? But we also have our fair share of just plain bizarre stuff. Maybe it’s the diet of fried food or the fact that we’re all hopped up on sweet tea 99.9% of the time, but you run into some weird folks and see some weird things here. And if you’ve read my previous posts, you know I quite like it that way.
Every time I walk into Walmart after dark, it’s like a zoo of people who I’m not sure have ever even seen the light of day. They’re weird. But god love them, I know I do, they make my trips to the grocery store so…. well… interesting. I can almost guarantee you that all of those pictures of “People of Walmart” came from the South. The robust girl in tight leopard pants, yeah, it happens here. The crazy old man who forgot to wear pants in public, I’ve seen it. And if you live in the South, I’m sure you have too.
I say, let your freak flags fly, Southerners. I love you for your pant-less wrinkled old legs and your strange aversion to loose-fitting clothing. You make life here interesting.
Most recently, the odd thing that’s caught my attention is the random full porcelain toilet that sits on the side of the road on my way to work.
The first time I laid eyes on it, I thought “Wow, this gives new meaning to the term Port-o-Potty (or is it Port-a-Potty?).” My second thought: Sigh… “It’s the South.” I mean, really? Who leaves a full sized (I’m sure used) potty on the side of some road? I would’ve at least taken the time to go dump it off in a random dumpster behind a business or apartment complex. Isn’t that what everyone does when they need to get rid of some big appliance/piece of furniture? No…? Just me… Okay. Anyway, the reason I know the toilet was intentionally placed there is because for the first several weeks of its existence on this road, it was standing upright and was fully intact. If it had fallen out of some guy’s truck bed, it would’ve been on its side and probably in a million tiny porcelain pieces. So every day as I drove by, I would wonder about that lone commode’s story. Until one day…
After standing proud on the side of the road for at least a few weeks, I was driving to work one morning and it was gone!! I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was sad to see that it had mysteriously vanished, but I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to be able to marvel at its weirdness everyday as I drove by anymore. I wasn’t kidding myself either. I knew at some point the city was probably going to send a garbage truck to come get the “eyesore” off of the side of their beautiful new road. I was just hoping I would get to enjoy it a few weeks longer. Or get a decent enough picture to prove it was there, but driving and photographing on an iPhone is IMPOSSIBLE.
But here’s where it gets weird. My toilet had been gone for at least a solid 10 days, long enough for me to move onto a fixation with the Junkyard Man’s new keyboard, when it REAPPEARED!!! Shock and awe does not even begin to describe what I was feeling. Where did it disappear to for TEN WHOLE DAYS? Did someone come get it, try it out, and then return it? First off, gross. And if they returned it, why did they bring it back to the same spot? My head was spinning with all of these questions. I think I even got a little faint at one point from all the excitement. Luckily for you all, I managed to snap a few half-decent photos of the traffic-side toilet.
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| Toilet View 1- From the Road |
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| Toilet View 2 - Close enough to touch. But that would be gross. |
Anyway, the morale of the story is this: take time to appreciate the craziness of the things you see in the South… and then, take out your camera phone out of that purse/pocket and send me pictures.
It’s the South, Y’all!
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