Meant to Be or Not Meant to Be....That is the Question

There's an old saying I have heard my entire life, "some things are meant to be." Obviously, this can cover millions of situations, good and bad. I often find it used to explain the inexplicable, to create an excuse for a bad result or hide disgust over something disagreeable. For example, in my life:

1) Georgia Tech winning a national championship in 1990. Although they had to share it, proving God is a Dawg at heart (even though we went 4-7 that year), it still irked me to see them succeed;

2) The closing of the Starbucks on Walnut Avenue in Dalton. It was the perfect location. Right off the exit. Steaming hot Venti Pike Place Roast on the way in to work and a hot tea on the way out at 6:00. Boom! The recession hits, the store was closed and replaced by a Chinese fast food restaurant.....the foulest foulness that ever fouled up the universe. Coffee > MSG infused cat meat. If I wanted to commit aggravated assault on my arteries, at least I would be organic about it;

3) The virtual disappearance of Pop Rocks. 1/10th of 1% of my childhood.....gone;

4) The Spin Doctors only made one album. Come on....you still sing "Two Princes" in the shower;

5) The popularity of the Kardashians. They have accomplished NOTHING in their lives except sex tapes and high profile marriages/relationships. Yet, they get TV shows and make millions. I know about 250 women in Bartow County, Georgia that fit that bill right now. Well, except for the high profile marriage thing....it would just be a high number of marriages;

6) White guys named Bernard and Maurice no longer exist. I am sorry, I just like those names. Now, white folks are naming kids after cities. "This is our son, Billings St. Paul Watkinsville Smith III." Seriously, come on, you know it is getting out of hand;

7) The toll on Georgia 400. The road is paid for. It's BEEN paid for. Where does that money go? Obviously not to any state department, considering the ridiculously bad service you receive. You don't believe me? Call one of them. An extremely disinterested, unhappy sounding female will answer the phone and forward you to somebody's voicemail quicker than William Hung's fall from fame. Let's take some of that money and reopen the Starbucks in Dalton.

8) Bjork. I have no idea what that is. I have even "wikipediaed" the subject and I still have nothing. And Wikipedia is never wrong.

9) America's Next Top Model. If any show in the universe characterizes the downfall of America, this is the one. Afflicted twenty-something girls doing their best imitation of spaghetti, dressed like aliens, fighting over the bathroom before their photo shoot with a liger under a palm tree. The entire show hinges on moments where a washed up Tyra Banks lines up the women and hands down Judgment by showing their photograph and says "Congratulations, you are on you're way to being America's Next Top Model." Then, all the spaghetti imitators hug and cry, probably break a collarbone while doing it and retreat to their bedrooms. OMG, they are so hot. This show has been on TV for NINE YEARS. Hey, Sri Lanka, if you want to invade us, now is the time;

10) Southerners taking "all white" beach photographs. C'mon, admit it, we have all done it. You donned your whitest Polo, bared your feet, went to Gulf Shores and showed those pearly whites about 67 times. You probably used it for a Christmas card too.  I'm going to buck the trend one day. My family and I are going to Newark, New Jersey and taking an "all magenta" photo under an oil refinery. Merry &$%$$# Christmas.

Some things are meant to be, I guess.

Now, there are situations that are "NOT meant to be." I was not meant to attend Georgia Tech. I was not meant to play poker well, enjoy video games or dip snuff. Believe me, I've tried all three and they only lead to vomit, sleep and right rear end cheek pain from sitting on my wallet too long. I was also not meant to abide mistreatment of helpless animals (why I joined the ASPCA) or the mistreatment of our civil rights (why I am an attorney). In New York City, the people are represented by two equally important groups, the district attorneys who.....just kidding (+1 for Law & Order reference).

I have found several situations here in New York City where I am "not meant to be." Times Square is beautiful, but only from afar. Bergdorf Goodman has great shirts and they are on sale, only $425 today. A night in The Plaza is $1000 and the mixed drinks are $20 a piece, even Budweiser is $12. I have tried to go to Brooklyn about three times and each time the subway has decided otherwise. I still haven't learned how to speak "subway" yet. New York subway drivers only speak when the train is moving and screeching on the tracks, so their speech sounds like a mix of Morse Code, rabbits dying and the Sand People from Star Wars. I assume the times I have been diverted from Brooklyn have been explained to me in this language, but I was too busy listening to "Heard It In a Love Song" on my Ipod to hear or understand.

On Friday night, however, I found the numero uno of "not meant to be" for me. Being the cultured individual that I am, I agreed to attend a ballet/opera interpretation of "Orpheus and Eurydice" at the Lincoln Center here in Manhattan. I should have known. It was obvious from the "get go," as we say down South. The only served Amstel Light and white wine. Cheese was the main course at the concession stand. As I watched and listened to the fellow operagoers enter the theater, my mind instantly went into overdrive. To put in in SAT words, this was a hodgepodge of exaggerated eccentricity and profound, preposterous posturing of predisposed pettiness. To put it in Cassville terms, these people were weird, y'all.  If this is who enjoyed opera, then it was going to be a long night. As it turns out, it was not long at all.

The first act comes out as I read the playbill, which is essentially lists the cast and characters along with a storyline. It's the Paris Ballet. The singers sing, the flutes are fluting, the oboes are oboeing and the cello is....celloing. The words are unintelligible, so I scramble through the playbill to find out that the entire opera is in German. There is no English interpretation. Great, I say to myself. Then a half naked man danced by himself for about thirty minutes around some women in nightgowns. Apparently, this was Orpheus. Eurydice had affixed herself in a giant chair in the corner and never  moved. A fallen tree laid in the middle of the stage. German verbiage covered the theater like kudzu covers north Georgia. This scene was called "Mourning." I began to mourn by manhood as I was auditorily emasculated minute by minute. The opera crowd exploded in applause and discussed the imagery, as I imagined a $5.00 plate of chicken fingers at Son's of Italy in Athens.

They took a break and moved to scene called "Birth." The half naked man danced around again. The women in nightgowns made a circle of tree branches in the middle of the stage and he danced in it for awhile. This signified a "womb," I guess. I thought of the times when we had thunderstorms in Cassville and we would lose branches off the oak trees. We would have to pile them up and burn them next to the pasture. Alas, these branches stayed flameless. Laura realized that this was not even a ballet at this point, but merely an interpretative dance. The half naked man flailed about like he was at an LMFAO concert. Perusing the playbill more, I realize that the lead singer is Japanese. I couldn't tell from the nosebleed section, or as I began to call it, the suicide contemplation section. So, now, we have a German opera sung by a Japanese person. The Axis Powers have reunited against me. The opera crowd explodes yet again.

Another break. More half naked men come out and more giant chairs are on the stage. Eurydice decides to join the fray in the scene called "Love." She and Orpheus play a game of tag while others run around and fall, getting back up and falling again. Somebody whispers in my section and is "shushed" by another patron. Yes, I thought, please be quiet. This scene is really touching and by touching, I mean like how Moloram rips the guy's heart out in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and lowers him into the fire. The language of the country that brought us Mueslix reverberates in my section. I lean forward and place my hands on my head. It's like when the pastor has talked past 12:00 and you are ready to get to Ryan's buffet immediately. Laura catches a heavy glance from me. There will be an intermission after this scene, before the scene called "Death." I think she read my mind and knew that intermission was my submission.

In full retreat, I left before "Death" started. The operagoers were talked semantics and idiosyncracies. I just wanted a good ol American hot dog. Ruralites like me....football loving, ESPN watching, let's meet at the bar and get some wings and beer kind of guys, don't do German/Japanese/French opera. It was boring, uninspiring, and I could not imagine how anyone could enjoy it. Kind of like Georgia Tech football. Yes, I was not "meant" to attend this opera. If I had been, I would have had some cherry Pop Rocks in my mouth and my Spin Doctors album blaring "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" while Orpheus twirled around the tree branches, afire.

Text Walking and Goldfish: Don't "Count Beer" Too Early, Y'all

"What part of Brooklyn you from?"

I was asked this question the other day in jest by a bartender. Apparently my accent is a source of great amusement here, a sincere amusement though. People here do not condescend outsiders, rather they try to understand them. New Yorkers inquire earnestly about the Southern heat and astonished of my stories about the lack of red lights in Cassville. They simply cannot grasp full service gas stations, maybe because I've seen a total of two during my entire stay here. You read that correctly.....2. Many of them have passed through Georgia at some point in their lives and have only nice things to say. It is refreshing to know that many people outside the South do not believe us to be ridgerunning Klansmen. There are some, however, that want us to be that way. It's not sexy to be sophisticated and Southern and I have thought about humoring them at times. I will don my best airbrushed Gatlinburg t-shirt, acid washed Jordaches, go barefoot to a bar and scream obscenities mixed in with remarks about the 2nd Amendment and Trent Lott. Then I'll order a Manhattan.

Strangely enough, I realized today that Cassville and New York City have more in common than one realizes. I grabbed the #1 train downtown this morning with about 20,000 other people, of which I know none. In a city of 9,000,000 people, I know exactly 10 people to whom I could say more than "hello." In fact, most people do not know the person standing next to them. In all the city hustle and bustle, there is a quiet undertone. In Cassville, it's simply the reverse....no hustle and bustle, but you know everybody. I thought about this as I surveyed my fellow passengers, all of them staring straight ahead or looking at their Ipods. They will likely dodge more cars in the next twenty minutes than a Cassvillian will dodge in half a year and they will likely not speak a word on this train ride. Such is life in New York City.

There is also another thing you have to dodge in New York. It's something that is infecting every metropolitan area in this country. An epidemic that is sweeping the nation, causing one town in New Jersey to ban it altogether. I call it "text walk." Essentially, metro citizens are glued to the screens of their phones for at least 17 hours per day. This does not just include standing in line at Starbucks, the train station or waiting in the bathroom line at the bar. People here walk and text, walk and send emails, walk and download ITunes, walk and Photoshop.....I cannot count how many people I have seen almost become a taxi hood ornament because they could NOT wait to send a "LOL, for real? Awesome, TTYL! #winning" before crossing 5th Avenue. Text walkers are easy to spot, as well. They are the ones weaving from side to side, speeding up, then slowing down, sometimes abruptly stopping because they are shocked by a text that informs them that Hollister is not opening until 11 AM. They look like that goldfish that you had when you were a kid and you let it die because you hadn't the first clue about how to care for a living thing. While on its last leg, its swimming patterns become erratic. It bumps the side of the aquarium. It floats to the top and then sinks, then suddenly becomes alive and swims straight to the bottom, slamming into the rocks. The difference is the goldfish is sick, people are just stupid. Oh, and the goldfish does not care about Hollister. OMG.

Text walking does not take place in Cassville. I mean, I've seen people walking from side to side, slowing down and speeding up inexplicably, but that explanation can be summed up by Atlanta's own Andre 3000 of Outkast......"engulfed in the OE." Cassville people haven't the need for texting to be honest. All you have to do is go to Cass Grocery and hang out for awhile. You will run into everyone you know within a couple of hours. Plus, it would be hard to text a Cassville conversation:

Randy (grumbles, how in the hell do you work this thing...): "Hey."

Leon: "Yeah"

Randy: "Where's Ted with that dam poly butter?"

Leon: "Poly butter? You smokin again?"

Randy: "I meant Polly Beauty lean. I aint smokin!" Dammit."

Leon: "Who the hell is Polly? Boy, Martha gonna have your ass if she finds out!"

Randy: "This phone keeps changing my words. There ain't no Polly."

Leon: "Yeah, boy. I done heard that one. You and Polly have fun at the Red Carpet."

Randy and Leon would likely meet up and fight about this later. Frankly, anything is better than those early 2000's Nextels that everybody had. I have ranted about these God-forsaken beacons of annoyance ad nauseum. Watching Randy and Leon annihilate a text conversation is better than hearing it loud and clear in the store at the busiest portion of the day, which is typically when these guys chose to have their discussion about sprinkler pipe at 35,000 decibels. Seriously, I distinctly recall a time where a construction worker had six people order an ice cream from me via Nextel. Imagine being stuck in a car in Georgia in August with no AC and the only radio you have is an FM station that is playing a Celine Dion marathon. That's the kind of hell I'm talking about.

Annoying Knuckledragger #1: "WHAT FLAVORS Y'ALL GOT???"

Me: "Chocolate, Vanilla, Stra..."

Annoying Knuckledragger #1: "HUH?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU, BUDDY!" (grrrr. buddy. I hate being called "buddy." I'm not a dog or a six-year old.)

Me: "CHOCOLATE, VANILLA, STRAWBERRY, BUTTER PECAN, BLACK WALNUT AND hydrochloric acid, you %%^^%#*(#"

Annoying Knuckedragger #1: "THAT LAST ONE SOUNDS GOOD! 10-4"

I guess 10-4 was the predecessor to TTYL. In any event, the conversation took about 45 minutes and I was on the verge of hari-kari via the ice cream scoop. I had to go "count the beer" for about 20 minutes after that one.

"Count the beer" was unique term for Cass Grocery employees only. Dad invented it in 1995 and it was genius, pure genius. Basically, if somebody needed to cool off, get out of sight or just get away from a customer....you would go into the walk-in cooler and "count the beer." It was cool there (literally and figuratively) and nobody was allowed to go to the back other than employees. It was created mainly due to female affection for myself and Russell. Many times, a less than desirable female would come to the store in search of us and they knew we were trapped. They would hang around for hours, talking to us, trying to get us to sell them beer or go out on a date. Luckily, Dad was working with me one day and one of these estrogen fueled, Glenn Close imposters descended upon me. Rather than be rude to her, he turned to me and said, "get your ass to the back and count the beer." Puzzled, I went to the cooler and started counting. I got to about 237 when Dad came in and said, "Partner, that's gonna be our little code from now on. She's gone. Whenever we need to get gone, we are counting beer." That little avenue to peace and serenity was used more times than crack at Whitney Houston's last birthday. Too soon? Oh well.

So, in short, I hope all my friends take a lesson and stop texting while walking, much less driving. Take a lesson from Cassville, meet up face to face and hash out your days and nights. Talk about PVC pipe, Hollister, the Braves, your grandmother's sweet potato casserole or how much beer you drank at the bowling alley last  night. You may be OK 99.9% of the time, but all it takes is that one time to change a life forever. Eventually it will catch up to you and the Good Lord will have you "counting beer" long before you should. 10-4?