What Will It Take to Put You In This Car Today?

Now that I have lived here a year, I think maybe it’s time to get a car.

I’ve been driving a borrowed car since I moved here from New York City. My thinking was that someone else’s vehicle could suffer the casualties as I familiarized myself with driving again and committed such heinous errors as driving for half an hour before realizing I still had the parking brake on. Now that I have progressed in my driving skills to the point that I can get from home to the grocery store without inciting a mob riot, I think I am ready for my own set of wheels.

I was looking forward to haggling with a car salesman. I had this vision of his cowering under the intensity of my intimidating New Yorker ways. Maybe I would even make him cry a little bit. And then he would sell me a car at slightly below cost – not so much that I would feel like I was taking unfair advantage – and I would swagger on home, keys in hand. It would be hard to swagger while driving, but I would manage it.

What happened was a little different. Despite my five-year-old-like insistence that I can DO IT MYSELF, I finally recognized that it would be wise to bring my boyfriend along to assist in negotiations. Not only did he insist that he knows a lot more about this than I do, but he pointed out that buying a car is the highlight of the male existence and to deprive him of this opportunity would be akin to shooting his dog and stringing it from the tree in the front yard.

An interesting thing happened to both of us as we climbed out of the car and our feet hit the pavement of the car lot. I suddenly felt about six inches shorter and completely out of my element. I was afraid if a car salesman tried to sell me a car without an engine, by way of explaining the lower gas mileage, I would just nod my head vigorously. Whereas Tom, in a birdlike movement reminiscent of a male peacock, actually puffed out his chest and, I believe, although I cannot be certain, growled a little as the salesman approached.

At that point buying the car became less interesting than watching the Testosterone Negotiation Dance that ensued. The men circled each other, bucking their heads forward and back, squinting their eyes, and showing their teeth in an attempt to put their prey at ease. It is rare, in the wild – perhaps nonexistent except on a car lot – for two species each to consider himself the hunter rather than the hunted. They performed ritualistic gestures such as kicking tires, slamming hoods, and emitting hearty, low-pitched chuckles to falsely portray a sense of total ease in an effort to throw the other one off his scent.

Occasionally one would make a sudden, head-butt-like move in the form of a no-nonsense phrase like, “Look, I know State Rapid Redux Exhaust Ejector Tax is complete horseshit.” Then an exchange of rapid-fire pleasantries accompanied with more intense chuckling and bearing of the teeth to show no ill-will meant. “Har har har, well, we put that on there because we have to but har har har of course we can wipe that off the ticket for you har har har. By the way, if you want a steering wheel that will be extra! Har har har.”

As the haggling continued, and both men started to turn red and snarl audibly, I realized that they were enjoying themselves, the way they might enjoy lifting weights heavy enough to crush a house or their own windpipe. It makes sense that, as much as I’d like to be completely independent and take care of everything myself, as a woman I do not naturally adapt to this type of transaction. It is a slow painful torture for me with no reward; whereas for men it is an opportunity to demonstrate wit and prowess by calling each other’s bluff and showing they can withstand the torture longer than their opponent.

But they both recognized that I was the key decision maker where it counted, without my having to say a word. For instance, they swiveled their heads a little anxiously in my direction and there was a tense pause in negotiations until I declared, in the tone of voice of a woman who knows she’s got the right answer on this one and nobody could convince her otherwise, that I wanted the car to be silver.

We all strutted home that day, because we all thought we got the better deal. Who knows what really happened, but now I’ve got a brand new car with which to torture the Huntsville driving population. So you better watch out for me in my... um… well, I can’t remember what kind of car it is, but it’s silver.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Therapy

I volunteered this year to host Christmas, which I believe is a symptom legally accepted by health insurance companies for admittance to a psychiatric facility.

See, my thinking was that it would be nice to have both my boyfriend’s and my family all together for the holidays. Which I believe meets the criteria necessary to prescribe electric shock treatments. They don’t do those much anymore, except in extreme circumstances, such as when you willingly choose to spend a prolonged length of time with your mother, mother-in-law, and a turkey.

It started to dawn on me that perhaps this wasn’t the wisest move when I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to pick up “a few things” that I figured we’d need in preparation for the big feast. About two feet into the store I came across turkey lifters. Did I need turkey lifters? I certainly didn’t already have turkey lifters. I must need turkey lifters. Into the basket.

Three feet further and I came across a holiday serving dish. Did I need a holiday serving dish? Of course I need a holiday serving dish – what am I going to put the turkey on?

By the time I got to holiday-themed cloth napkins I was a broken woman. I sat in the middle of Bed, Bath & Beyond, my hair standing on end, my clothing askew, surrounded by a multitude of holiday-themed kitchen and bath items totaling somewhere close to what they say Gen Xers should have in their 401(k) before retiring. “I CAN’T DO THIS!” I bellowed into my cell phone to whoever was unlucky enough to be on my speed dial, while fellow customers sidled cautiously around me and my potential purchases.

In the end, I put everything back except the turkey baster, which seemed like the most important item, and went home.

But, “You don’t need a turkey baster,” my brother explained helpfully when I proudly announced my purchase. “We put the turkey in a bag and it keeps all the juices in.” He was a little baffled when I started to rock silently back and forth.

In addition to the food preparation there is the intricate sleeping arrangement situation. Although I thought we had plenty of space in that our house is about four times the size of my former New York apartment, it turns out that two bedrooms are not practical for hosting a dozen family members. I have resorted to having three people sleep in the garage, and one in the fireplace, standing up. I think this will work.

My boyfriend now goes through life with a braced look about him, prepared for whenever I might, in the middle of something totally unrelated, such as sex, look at him and announce, “I think we’ll need extra pillowcases.” I have learned that sometimes my one-track mind can be a bit of a problem for others.

I have called my mother to hound her about transportation arrangements so many times that I am no longer in her will, and if I spend any more long lunch hours perusing the mall for any holiday-related item I may have missed, such as a three-foot gold ceramic Christmas tree center piece that plays “Greensleeves,” I will be fired from my job.

Which will give me plenty of time to get started on next year! Oh look, I wonder if those kind-looking men in the clean white coats might want a turkey baster for Christmas?

The Halloween Suburban Myth

I am exhausted. I am covered in goop, my back aches, my hair is a matted mess, my hands are cramped to uselessness and I look like hell.

No, I am not the mother of a newborn. I just got finished carving our Halloween pumpkin.

Two hours into my intricately detailed haunted house carving I came to my senses – the pain in my left hand is what did it – and wondered what the hell I was thinking. But by then it was too late. I couldn’t put half a haunted house out for the kiddies to enjoy; I would get hate mail for the rest of the year. So I plundered on, and in the meantime simultaneously and unwittingly completed my “disheveled housewife” costume.

Turns out it was nearly all in vain because we had only four trick-or-treaters. Back in New York you didn’t get many kids, because the front doors to all the apartment buildings are locked and impenetrable (one hopes). So in an effort to keep out the riff-raff, we also alienated ourselves from a truly enjoyable tradition. Instead of trick-or-treating, Halloween lovers got half naked, sprayed themselves with glitter, threw on an elaborate showgirls-like sequined and feathered headpiece, and paraded through Chelsea in 30 degree weather. And those were just the men. I found this terribly amusing and most certainly entertaining, but it just wasn’t the same as my childhood Halloweens. Now that I am back in suburbia I was truly looking forward to a real Halloween. I envisioned myself the Cool Lady on the block, the one who gives out handfuls of “fun size” candy bars, rather than this new, micro-sized candy “bite” they’ve come up with recently.

(A quick aside, a soliloquy, if you will, on this new Micro size – which, if the old Halloween candy bar was called “fun” size, must be the “Delirious With Ecstasy” size. The Micro Size is simply un-American. Americans enjoy Super Size everything. It doesn’t matter if we can consume the serving within our lifetimes or not – we want it BIG. We want everything BIG and for the most part the entire consumer economy supports us in this, as evidenced by French fry portions that can no longer fit through those little windows at the drive-thru. SO WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE CANDY PEOPLE? Why is chocolate the only thing getting smaller? I have to stop now, or I’ll be too emotional to continue this column.)

Anyway, in my fantasy, the kids would pass each other on the street and throw meaningful advice at one another, as we used to do when we were kids, along the lines of, “Don’t go to that house – they’re giving out toothpaste,” or “That lady is giving out REAL size Hershey’s!” And in these conversations my house would feature prominently, reverently, as they whispered to each other, “She gives out whole handfuls of the really good stuff and there weren’t ANY dum-dums in her bowl at all!” And then all the children in the neighborhood, after they had completed their rounds, would vote me Best Lady on the Block and carry me down the street on their shoulders and vow never to egg my house again.

Well, okay, perhaps that was a tad unrealistic but the point is I was very much looking forward to being generous on Halloween. But we only got four kids. Four. Kids. I can only assume that the trend that had begun when I left suburbia seven years ago has increased in momentum to the point that by next year, trick-or-treating will just be a suburban myth.

When I have children, I will gather them ‘round on Halloween night and tell them fantastic tales of when I was a child, and my parents would dress me up, and take me door to door around the neighborhood, and perfect strangers would each give me a piece of candy, and at the end of the night I would have a pillowcase full of candy that was all mine! And they will roll their eyes at me, and think, “Mom’s been into the wine again,” and ask if they can go IM on their blackberries now.

I understand that we must protect our children, but it really pisses me off that a few crazies out there have ruined this tradition for everyone. It is truly a shame that one day soon children will no longer know the joy of roaming the streets after dark, dressed as their favorite hero or as something to make the girls scream, committing silly little acts of vandalism all in good fun, and eating so much chocolate they puke in your flower bed.

Those were the days.

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Multi-tasking

There are those who believe that women are scatter-brained flibberty-gibbets incapable of focusing on any one task from start to finish. There are others, such as myself, who would like to point out that the ability to do more than one task simultaneously is called, in the workplace, “multi-tasking” and is considered to be a highly desirable asset. But unfortunately those who do not share this talent have a difficult time understanding its benefits.

I can cook dinner, talk on the phone, do the laundry and empty the dishwasher all at the same time. And very rarely will I accidentally dump the salad into the dryer instead of the salad bowl. True, there are these occasional slip-ups when we multi-task, but for every mistake I make, I have accomplished ten other tasks successfully.

Many years ago, when we dwelled in caves and did not shave our armpits, men were expected to do only one thing: kill elk (or buffalo, or mammoths, depending on the century and continent). Meanwhile, the women squatted in the cave and kept the newly-discovered campfires burning, picked berries, made clothes, bore and raised children, healed the sick, and, if they had time, ran out during lunch to the hairdresser’s to get that expertly matted, just-got-hit-by-lightning look that was so popular back then. Our genetics have changed little since those times (although luckily hairstyles have improved dramatically).

My responsibilities around the house are to: clean the house, do the laundry, cook, wash the dishes, pay the bills, walk the dog, check the mail, make the coffee, and shop for food. My boyfriend’s tasks are to: take out the garbage, if he remembers, which is about 30% of the time. I do honestly believe he means to be more helpful, but men have this uncanny ability to tune out chores that need doing. A man and woman can be standing together staring at the exact same kitchen and where she sees coffee grounds, cracker crumbs, soap scum, fingerprints, and rotten food, he sees, well, a kitchen. And so, when she begins her ritualistic high-pitched wail consisting of variations on the general idea that their house is so dirty pigs would be offended by it, he will respond with a resigned look that says, “Great. There goes poker night.” He will then proceed to help her clean in an overly-solicitous manner that states he is humoring her because she is clearly unstable – not because he agrees the place needs to be cleaned.

And he really doesn’t think it does. We must remember that this is the same guy who, when you first met him, did not clean the dishes in his apartment until there was nothing left to eat out of, including the bathtub. Same person also considered underwear clean if you turned it inside out, and saw no reason to wash the sheets ever, since you always bathed yourself immediately after sleeping on them anyway. There was stuff growing in his sink evolved enough to go two rounds on Jeopardy.

To their credit, due to an uncanny ability to block out everything around them including babies crying and the neighbor’s house on fire, men can concentrate so intently on whatever single task is at hand that they do a much better job on it than a woman would. Granted, it takes them seven times longer, but when it’s done, it is really done. I may be able to clean the whole house in two hours while my boyfriend has only gotten halfway through cleaning the guest bathroom’s toilet, but when he is finished with that toilet, by God, you could eat off it, if that’s your kind of thing.

The downside of this intense focus is when it misses the target. For example, you may say, “Honey, while I am chopping the broccoli, cooking the chicken, heating the bread and fixing tomorrow’s breakfast could you please stir the rice?” He will then get up from the couch with every intention of doing the chore you have asked him to do. However, in between the couch and the kitchen and directly in his path is the television, on which there is a shiny black helicopter dodging machine-gun fire in a most seductive manner. An hour later when you glance up, sweaty and breathless from your ten simultaneous chores, he will still be standing there, staring wide-eyed at the television like one of those zombies from Night of the Living Dead. “Honey?” you’ll say, your voice catching on a sob, “the rice?” (which, of course, burned a long time ago). And he’ll visibly shake himself, remove his gaze from the source of his intense concentration and look at you as if he has no idea how you got into his house.

I suppose men have just as much room to gripe about this genetic dichotomy as we do, and hopefully when the frustration reaches its apex we can all take a moment to reflect on how well we balance each other out. But not if the #$%&* trash hasn’t been taken out in two weeks because frankly with that smell I can’t concentrate on anything.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

It’s absolutely beautiful outside. The temperature has dropped, the sun is shining, there isn’t a cloud in the sky and there’s a lovely fall-is-coming breeze wafting through the room.

I’m so depressed.

For many this merely signals the coming of fall, but for me it heralds the approach of Football Season. Which means that for the next several months, the closest thing I will get to affection from my live-in boyfriend is a look of vague recognition on the rare occasions we see each other around the house.

Women, sing with me of conversations tuned out, houses littered with beer bottles, and our inability to concentrate on anything on Sundays because the air is so often pierced with random gunshot-like explosions of alternating fury and joy aimed at the television.

Sometime around Labor Day my otherwise mild-mannered boyfriend turns into a one-track-minded frenetic football freak. His hair stands on end, his eyes bug out, and you never know when he’ll burst into angry discourse. Something he reads in a magazine, sees on television, hears about in an IM conversation will trigger a sudden torrent of furious obscenities as if somebody has just offended his mother in the most vulgar manner possible. “WHAT!? OH COME ON! THIS IS BULLSHIT!” he’ll scream to one of a various number of screens, interrupting an otherwise peaceful night, sending the dog and myself into terrorized heart convulsions.

And it’s not just limited to Sundays and Monday nights, however much they try to convince us of this. “Just two days a week,” they’ll say in a firm yet whiney voice, implying that we are being so unbelievably and unreasonably demanding of their time we may as well suggest a straight-jacket-for-two. But we know that is a load of crap. Yes, the games may be limited to those two days, but the dissertations on what happened, what is going to happen, and what should happen or should have happened takes place around the clock.

There are several ways we women can deal with this. The first and most obvious is to spend every Sunday shopping, but by mid-October the creditors beating down the door are more intrusive than the football-related emotive eruptions spewing Exorcist-like from the person hazily resembling, but no longer recognizable as, our significant others. The second is to give in to the pleads of “Come on, honey, just try to understand the game. If you did, you might just enjoy it!” Another condescending implication of which I am fond – that my inability to enjoy a bunch of men slamming into each other for three and a half hour stretches indicates some flaw in my character.

Every year I try anew to “understand,” by joining the boyfriend on the couch and, with a heavy sigh, listen to him explain, again, about 10 yards and fourth downs until my ears may not be bleeding, but I wish they were, because then at least something interesting would be happening.

It’s no use. I will never find this game stimulating. But I haven’t given up hope that I can still somehow insinuate myself into his fall schedule without having to memorize the definition of a pass reception. After all, there’s always half time, and I have one more trick up my sleeve involving a Cheerleader costume and a bathtub full of beer. One way or another, I am determined to win his attention back from this bunch of IQ-challenged muscle men intent on destroying each other over a piece of pigskin in the shape of a giant suppository. Or at least remind him that I still live here. I mean, come ON! THIS IS BULLSHIT!

Heart of New York

I have wanted to write about my experience in New York City on September 11, 2001 for a long time. I haven’t done so, because I feel there is no way I can do justice to the intense emotion of that time. And while the day was the most terrifying I have ever known, and ever hope to know, the fact is that I was never in any danger, nor were any of my family or friends. Although while it was happening I did not know that.

Because I find it impossible to describe the horror of September 11^th, I would like to honor the third anniversary by recounting the small levels of heroism I observed during that unprecedented time. I was always proud to live in New York and regard myself as a New Yorker despite never having met the prerequisite of a ten-year residency. I was never more proud of or impressed by my fellow New Yorkers than I was on September 11^th.

New Yorkers have a reputation for being harsh, demanding, and cold, but you know from television accounts how the city pulled together. You know that there were lines out the door at the blood banks and they had to turn most of us away. You know that nobody took advantage of the fact that the city’s bravest and finest police and firemen were focused downtown, leaving only a skeleton crew – and an exhausted and grieving one at that – to oversee the rest of the city. You know that only a very few misguided souls tried to take out their anger and grief on innocent Muslims. You already know that my humble tales are just a few of hundreds of thousands.

You probably heard that New York City, the most aggressive and pushy society in the

United States if not the world, was completely silent for weeks following September 11^th. A city normally filled with the constant background noise of honking and yelling remained respectfully hushed. Suddenly the ambulance sirens that used to be a part of that white noise stood out shrilly in the silence.

But you may not know that local news channels would regularly announce the needs of various shelters and relief organizations for things such as heavy wool socks for the firemen slogging their way through water and muck to find their fallen brothers. An hour later a new message would run across the television screen: “Over 100 boxes of socks have been received in response to our request. Please do not bring any more.” Over and over, for days, this would happen. New Yorkers remained plastered to the local news just as you were, and the moment they learned of a need, they could not move quickly enough to fill it.

What you probably never heard about was the group of dust-covered, exhausted firemen who sank to the grungy floor of a Penn Station platform to await their train home after spending hours, perhaps days, at Ground Zero. Perhaps you, too, would have burst into tears as, gradually, up and down the long platform on both sides, fellow travelers rose to their feet, turned towards the group of weary firemen, and broke into applause and cheers. I wish you, too, had seen the looks of surprise, and then gratitude, spread across those soot-streaked faces.

And you definitely don’t know about the lovely Muslim man who ran the deli on the corner of my block, on 90^th Street and 1^st Avenue. I went to the deli the afternoon of September 11^th to stock up on food, batteries, water – all the things it seemed necessary to buy, but which could never alleviate the feeling of raw vulnerability. A man was struggling with the ATM in the deli. Since most New Yorkers had gone directly to their ATMs to withdraw as much cash as possible for whatever emergencies might lie ahead, the city had been drained of cash in a matter of hours. “The ATM is out of money,” explained the gentleman behind the counter. “But if there is anything you need, please, take it.”

The written word – mine or anybody else’s – cannot do justice to what happened on September 11^th. But I hope it can at least touch upon the unprecedented heroism of this country and that day, and remind us of how a vast city dropped all pride and prejudice and offered services, unity, comfort and trust in a time of unthinkable and unprecedented horror that changed forever that remarkable city and our entire world. Here’s to you, New York.

The Take-Apart Man

As my loyal fans (both of you – hi, Mom) know, I have suffered through a number of adjustments in moving to

Huntsville from New York City. But this time I’ll give you a break from my tales of woe to share with you some of my enjoyable lifestyle modifications.

Take, for instance, the dishwasher. In New York, dishwashers were owned only by the very, very wealthy; people so wealthy they never actually saw their own kitchens, the kitchen being a room designated for the hired help. The rest of us not only had no hope of a dishwasher, we didn’t really have a kitchen. My “kitchen” consisted of a refrigerator, a miniature oven and a sink shoved into the corner of my living room. I stored off-season clothes in the oven, since closet space was just an urban myth.

And I am positively in love with my washing machine. A machine located in my own home that will wash my clothes any time I tell it to. I no longer have to worry about a bum wandering in off the street and stealing my still-damp underwear from the dryer. The first time I used my new washing machine I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure out where the quarters go.

In addition to all the machinery that has contributed to my new and approved lifestyle, there’s the SPACE! Closets! A bathroom that does not require climbing over the tub in order to get to the toilet! A whole room, attached to the house, devoted just to your car. A car – a machine that waits patiently for me, wherever I last left it, to take me anywhere I want to go! A life-sized couch in the living room! Furniture at all! I admit I went a bit nuts with the furniture-buying when I first moved here. The luxury of not having to worry about what will fit, or how to get it in the house, was intoxicating.

When I first moved to New York City I purchased the first real piece of furniture I had ever owned: a brand-new sofa. But when they attempted to deliver my sofa they could not fit it through the narrow stairwell. Which was just as well, since it turned out even if it had, it still wouldn’t have fit through my apartment door.

This is when the deliveryman introduced me to the Take-Apart Man, a whole profession that I never knew existed. The take-apart men subsist off those who live in walk-up brownstones with staircases about a foot and a half wide, capable of accommodating only the starving models attracted in droves to New York City - or a person of my size, if one does not mind turning sideways and scuttling up the stairwell crab-like. The Take-Apart Man will come to your apartment building and, for a mere $300, take apart the brand new sofa you just purchased, carry it up piece meal to your apartment, and reassemble it. Although I suffered several minor heart attacks watching him tackle my sofa in the lobby with various sharp implements, I had to admit having the sofa actually inside my apartment was a lot more convenient.

That sofa deteriorated significantly over the next several years but I never replaced it, because I could not bear to go through that ordeal again. Spending an additional $300 to get a brand-new stranded sofa into the apartment seemed, at the time, fair enough. Spending $300 to disassemble a dilapidated piece of crap in order to get it out of the apartment was too unfair to contemplate. I toyed with the idea of simply taking an ax to it myself but somehow I sensed that would probably lead to a disaster involving sirens. And so that sofa remained until I moved out of the apartment and grudgingly re-admitted the Take-Apart Man for the final time.

In Huntsville I have a house, and in this house there are double doors leading into every room except the bathroom, which, although it’s the size of my old

New York apartment, doesn’t really need a sofa anyway. I went out and found the two biggest sofas I could to go in my new big living room, and added an entire TV wall unit for good measure.

I do not miss the Take-Apart Man, but I send him my fondest regards. I have a new best friend now: the Lawn Guy.

Acronymish

Since moving to Huntsville I have the odd sensation of living in a foreign country where my knowledge of the language spoken is limited to a few phrases recalled from a high school foreign language course. Because, like many of you, I now work with the government. Which means I have been introduced to the government’s very own variation of the English language based almost entirely on endless strings of acronyms.

Like a tourist, I consult on a regular basis the Acronym-to-English guide (AEG) the government has thoughtfully provided. Using acronyms is supposed to streamline our communication. But more often than not you don’t know what the acronym stands for, which means you have to ask. And finding out what it stands for doesn’t necessarily clear things up.

But my natural inclination to blame the government for my difficulty assimilating to Acronymish isn’t entirely fair. This language conversion isn’t limited to the government; they’ve simply perfected the art form. Financial institutions, technology, healthcare – they all rely on acronym shortcuts designed solely to confuse the masses (CTM). The reason it takes the masses so long to realize they’ve been violated is because companies shield their illegal activities with a barrage of acronyms. By the time we’ve looked up WPTSAYM - JSH in the AEG to discover it means “We plan to steal all your money - just sign here,” it’s too late. And it’s not like they weren’t honest and upfront about it. If they had warned us in French, we’d still be held responsible for the consequences, right?

Despite the potential for harm, we go along with all these acronyms because we as a culture have become so lazy we can’t be bothered to verbalize whole words anymore. We use acronyms so seamlessly in our everyday conversations that we’ve forgotten that the acronyms actually stand for anything. If someone asked me to pick up a Digital Versatile Disk on my way home from work, I wouldn’t have a clue where to go for one.

Like cavemen who used one simple stick drawing to mean “I went hunting for seven days and killed this antelope by stabbing him with my spear. And wouldn’t you know it? I got a splinter,” we are regressing to the point where we are able to convey a complex thought process with just a few simple letters. Contrarily, if we take too long to convey our meaning, or share something nobody wants to hear, it’s TMI. Then again, it could just be that you have ADD and any I is TMI.

Computerized communication, more than the government, will be the ultimate force behind converting English into a language made up entirely of acronyms. My young nieces and nephews consider me ridiculously old fashioned because I use complete sentences in IM, while the messages they send me are completely incomprehensible jumbles of symbols, letters, numbers and emoticons. I should probably ask them to decipher the government documents I am struggling with at work; it is in, after all, their language. By the time their generation is running this country, speaking whole words and sentences will be as embarrassing to them as when our grandparents spoke the language of the “old country.”

But like my grandparents who continued throughout their lives to speak a mixture of English and German, no matter how much I try to assimilate to the new culture, I’m sure I will intermittently throw in an old-fashioned fully formed word now and then. I won’t be able to help it. It was the language of my people.

Lessons in Southern Hospitality

Whoever coined the phrase “Southern hospitality” was not kidding around. I was raised by a bunch of easterners whose idea of hospitality was pretty much limited to bagels and nose-hair-curling coffee. Moving to the South has made me painfully aware that the version of hospitality I learned is the equivalent of kindergarten-level here. I am now studying the veritable art form that is Southern Hospitality. Or, in my own words: How to Be Nice to People.

In New York you go out of your way not to acknowledge other people. It is never permissible to make eye contact with anybody, since it could result in a situation involving the police. With eye contact considered rude at best and dangerous at worst, pleasant conversation was out of the question. You went about your business pretending you were the only person on the street, and everybody else did the same. If you didn’t have anything important to say, such as “get out of my way,” you kept your mouth shut.

It did not take long for me to learn the basic, expected gestures of Southern Hospitality. But it’s taking me a good deal longer to actually put them into practice. The finger wave from the steering wheel, for example. Aside from the fact that any distraction from my form of driving could be lethal, it’s just not a gesture that comes naturally to me. In New York our finger gestures had a whole different meaning.

The art of pleasant small talk is another aspect of Southern Hospitality I am trying to master. My Love is from the South and well versed in pointless chit-chat. He can strike up an impressively mundane conversation about the weather or Applebee’s menu or the aesthetics of a license plate tag or any number of pointless, mind-numbing topics of conversation with strangers he may run into at, say, the gas station, with no difficulty. My conversations with complete strangers have always been limited to “How are you?” and “Fine.” Anything more drew wariness and irritation.

It’s not just an inability to perform these little niceties that troubles me; I am equally uncomfortable receiving them. People who wave to me when I am walking to the mailbox make me suspicious. When someone asks me a question in line at the grocery store I become flustered and tongue-tied. I immediately assume they are trying to steal my wallet. Because it can’t be that people are just this nice.

But the hospitality of strangers is nothing compared to the hospitality of people you know, which can border on terrifying. When I visit My Love’s family, I am so unnerved by their hospitality that I develop a stutter. My Love’s mother will, from the moment I walk in the door, try to press all her most precious belongings on me. “Do you see anything you like?” she’ll ask eagerly, while I stumble about her antique-furnished home, looking for the bagels. At first I thought she meant, Did I like her home? I came to realize she meant, did I see anything I’d like to actually appropriate?

My upbringing has taught me that it is rude to make a habit of going shopping in other people’s houses, and yet here it seems it’s rude if you don’t. Southerners are so gracious they would rather politely transfer all their possessions to you, and sit on the floor in an empty house, then worry for the rest of their lives that there may have been something you saw and liked in their home that they didn’t give to you.

I’m trying, really I am. On our last visit I accepted from My Love’s mother four framed prints, a mirror, and a canoe. I continue to develop my polite conversation skills, which still have the awkward quality of a child’s first steps. And, like those early walkers, I often trip over my own feet. It just doesn’t seem natural, all this niceness. It embarrasses me and makes me uncomfortable. So if you are a true master of Southern Hospitality, please put me at ease by ignoring my presence except to cut me off in line or give me the other finger in traffic. Then I’ll truly feel welcome.

Chigger Mythology

In New York City, insects and wildlife are limited to cockroaches, the occasional squirrel, rats and Wall Street brokers. Although rats should probably be categorized more as an alien life form than “wildlife” as typically defined.

Over the centuries these few species and the 2 million sub-humans who inhabit the tiny island of Manhattan have come to an agreement. All go about their business trying desperately to pretend the others don’t exist. While the occasional misinformed cockroach may be seen scuttling across the kitchen floor, New Yorkers know not to attempt to attack with something as ineffectual as Raid. Later that night the unharmed cockroach and several of its burly brethren will wake you out of a sound sleep, and ever so subtly threaten you with switchblades.

And that’s nothing compared to what the rats could do.

So my experience with nature, when I landed wide-eyed in Huntsville, AL, was fairly limited. I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of the insects that refused to keep out of sight and maintain the “I don’t see you and you don’t see me” philosophy that worked so well for us in New York. Not only do they refuse to keep to the code, they will actually make contact with you in an extremely unpleasant manner.

At first I thought, “Okay, a couple of mosquitoes. I’m not such a wussy city girl that I can’t handle a few bites now and then.” Well, clearly my tolerance was the equivalent of a welcome mat to the little shits because as the summer progressed I started finding them in my home, which is just unacceptable. I discovered that if I neglected to move any object positioned within a few inches of the wall, in less than a week an entire colony of spiders would set up a civilization there. There’d be tiny little spider hardware and grocery stores, maybe a couple of churches. Some of the more literate spiders had a library.

Eventually word got out among the insect world that I was a real push-over, and a tasty Northern delicacy. Last week I was attacked by a veritable army of what I came to learn were “chiggers” when I volunteered, out of the kindness of my heart, and because I wanted to get in for free, at a Botanical Gardens function. Afterwards, I came home to discover my legs and feet covered in little red welts that itched so badly I nearly wept.

The ladies I work with, who have taken the naïve New Yorker under their wing, informed me casually during a meeting in the conference room that my discomfort was thanks to chiggers, which buried under the skin and continued to live off of their host. In other words, those were not bug bites – those were actual bugs, living in my skin.

Words cannot describe my horror. In those first few moments of enlightenment I was torn between crumpling into a sobbing heap and finding a way to claw out of my own body.

The ladies went on with the lesson by explaining that the chiggers needed to be smothered to death. One, a veritable walking Rite-Aid, whipped a bottle of clear nail polish from her bag and instructed me to polish every bump. With the thought of those things living under my skin – oh God I can’t even say it again – anyway, I yanked my pants legs up, right in the middle of the meeting, and gave my chiggers a manicure they wouldn’t forget.

And now comes the part when the naïve little Northern girl educates you Southerners about your pesky little cohorts. After racing home, doing a kind of leap/walk as if trying to shed my skin snake-like, I went online. Turns out it’s all just a myth. Chiggers don’t bury themselves under your skin and live on. In fact, they usually die before they’re even done biting, thanks to our anti-chigger antibodies.

But I want to make it clear: Just because I am relieved to know this it is not an invitation to the remaining chiggers out there. You’re going to have to find some other sucker to torment because the naïve New Yorker has wizened up and bought ten gallons of Bug-Off. This is war.

Beware: New York Driver

Driving scares the hell out of me. Most people who say that mean other people’s driving scares them. And they are very likely justified in their opinion, since chances are it’s me they’re afraid of.

I lived in New York for six years where owning a car is not only unnecessary, it’s an inconvenience. Cars require their own rent in

Manhattan. They take up enough space in a garage to make a small studio apartment. And we all know how much a studio apartment in Manhattan costs. If you don’t already know, I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want to be responsible for your heart attack.

It took me about a month to get used to not having a car when I first moved to New York. And then I loved it. No unexpected break-downs or insurance headaches. No more dealing with sleazy mechanics who could convince me that, because the windshield wiper wasn’t working, the entire engine would need to be replaced.

I have now re-entered the world of car-ownership. I have been back for six months and have officially established myself as a local menace. The woman holding up a line of traffic going 25 mph? That was me. The idiot who drove in the exit and out the entrance, causing you to swerve in terror? Oops, sorry. The clearly unstable driver who realized too late the right lane was merging, panicked, came to a complete stop, and burst into tears? Yep. Me again.

I have learned to compensate for my ineptitude in several ways. I do not drive at night. I do not drive when it is raining. I do not drive when it is windy. I do not drive unless I know exactly where I am going, and even then I am extremely tense. And I certainly do not drive with anybody else in the car because the distraction could be fatal.

I do drive enough, however, to be annoyed by the new breed of multi-tasker, the Cell Phone Driver (joining the prestigious ranks of more ancient threats such as the Map Reading Driver and the Lipstick Applying Driver). I think I am a member of the majority here. We’ve all been cut off in traffic by a moron paying more attention to his conversation than staying in his lane. I am proud to say that at least I am not one of those people. Although not due to principle so much as inability to do anything, other than drive, while driving.

Besides cell phones, another drastic change since I was last on the road is the size of the typical vehicle. Not so long ago, we were content to drive about in cars that could only seat our immediate family. Now I am competing for road space with automobiles that rival the New York City cross-town bus in size. And was some law passed, while I was happily partaking of public transportation, that states the larger your vehicle, the fewer rules of the road apply to you? Just because you can run over my car with yours doesn’t mean you should. Although if I’m honest I have to admit I am often asking for it.

Luckily people seem to be very understanding of my learning curve, since the favored manner of pointing out my mistakes would tend to be a lot of loud, startling honking likely to result in further traffic violations on my part. Considering I am used to New Yorkers honking at you whether or not you are actually doing anything wrong, I find this town amazingly indulgent. For example, I once watched a car wait a full 15 seconds before realizing the light was green, and not one car behind her honked!

Okay, that was actually me. I was trying to figure out how to change the radio station. I wasn’t terribly successful. But on the bright side, I discovered the hazard lights which I suspect will come in pretty handy.

So since there’s a good chance I’ve cut you off or otherwise annoyed you on the road, and because it is my intention to make more friends than enemies in my new town, let me use this column to just say: sorry. I really appreciate your patience, and I won’t take it personally if you feel inclined to give me the finger. And thanks for not honking.

© 2004 Karen Bertiger

Return of the Mammoth Hunters

While I sit here at my laptop listening to the simulated sounds of whales to ease my technology-induced nerves, my chair massager buzzing away those pesky lower-back aches brought on by hours on the treadmill, I find myself wondering… have we gone a little overboard with the modern conveniences? With so many of our daily activities becoming simulated these days, are we really living anymore, or just pretending to?

Take natural childbirth, for example. Stop and think for a moment how strange it is that this is just an option. “I want to have my child naturally,” says my 8-month bursting-at-the-seems mother-to-be friend. Like many women these days, she is carrying a ridiculously large fetus. They are saying that this rash of large babies is due to all the chemicals in our food. Chemicals that lower our cholesterol, increase our vitamin intake, decrease our fat intake, and, wouldn’t they like us to believe, simulate a full hour of cardiovascular exercise. As I’m staring at this veritable basketball she intends to squeeze out next month, she tells me confidently, serenely, “I want to be alert for every part of it. I want to be able to watch my child come into the world.”

That’s all well and good, admirable and noble. But is she crazy? What about the pain? “Women have been doing this for centuries and centuries,” she points out. “I want to be a part of that.”

“For centuries and centuries women have been crouching in the dirt mashing cornmeal with a rock,” I say. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to.” My grandmother delivered my mother the old-fashioned way – with a lot of drugs – and even smoke and drank through her pregnancy, and my mother turned out just fine. A little more annoying than most people, but I don’t think that has to do with how she was born.

Have we swung so far towards a simulated world that we are now actually starting to swing back the other way? Natural childbirth, organic foods (it was news to me that the vegetables I have been eating were inorganic)… a return to the lives our ancestors lived in the Jean Aeul era – ancestors who, I may point out, had a life expectancy of about 10 minutes and communicated by grunting and scratching their armpits.

Fortunately we still have a lot of popular simulated practices to keep this outdated concept of living at bay. For example, if I tried to ride a bike that actually went somewhere I think I would become too disoriented to exercise. Not only do we have the treadmill to prevent us from running too far away from where we parked the car, we now have an even more advanced machine to simulate running itself, something easier on our knees and backs. Our ancestors must have had to give each other back rubs all the time what with all that running after mammoths and away from saber tooth tigers and such. But we no longer have to worry about the running, the tigers or the mammoths - thanks to modern technology, zoos, and the fact that the mammoths died out, probably because their big huge knees hurt so much from all that running away they did from our ancestors.

We have video games that simulate flying, fighting and even dying. Modern technology allows us to die dozens of times a day! Why, when I was a kid, it was pretty damn painful to die. So painful, in fact, that we pretty much avoided it as an after-school activity. The closest we came was poking each other with a stick and declaring, “You’re dead!” to which you could always answer, “Nuh-uh!” Our ancestors chasing those mammoths had even worse odds. If they were unfortunate enough to catch a tusk to the head, there were no “extra lives” or “do-overs” in their future. Now the most you can expect is a bit of carpal tunnel and maybe a thumb callus.

But forget dying. There are far more impressive conveniences thanks to modern technology. You can date via the internet, check out your own groceries with an extremely cheerful, computerized cashier who never dispenses the wrong change, and bank at an ATM whose one-eyed camera keeps a maternal watch over your newly acquired cash. When your phone line goes kaput you sigh with relief when the phone company says, “Oh, we can fix that remotely. We won’t need to dispatch a technician.”

Despite the seeming convenience of all this advancement, I guess it’s still possible that some day soon the natural childbirth and organic foods way of thinking will catch on, and we’ll have to go back to massaging, running, birthing, fighting and dying for real. Or, God forbid, talking to each other again.

I hope not. I don’t really like people all that much. But to be on the safe side, I’m practicing my hand gestures and sharpening my weapons made of animal teeth, just in case.

© 2004 Karen A. Bertiger

Warning! Doppler radar!

Whoa wait a minute – what’s with this tornado business? Nobody warned me about this when I moved here! I knew tornadoes existed from The Wizard of Oz, but I thought they were only found in MGM scripts. Besides, tornadoes aren’t something you’d intuitively take under consideration when looking at prospective areas to call home. Does the city have a high percentage of employment? Are the school systems decent? Does it have a low crime rate? Is there a chance I’ll be sucked up into a life-threatening 150mph tunnel of wind?

I hail originally from Arizona, where there is no weather, only heat. Someone once asked me what we did for fun during those 120-degree days (i.e. all of them). I told him truthfully, “We sat on the couch and whined.’” We couldn’t get up from the couch if we wanted to, because we had become stuck to it.

Then I moved to New York where I discovered there is more than one season. Colorful trees in autumn, sparkling snow in winter that decorated the city in birthday cake frosting. And when the snow’s pristine white became peppered with black soot, it looked like Cookies and Cream.

I thought Alabama would have even prettier seasons than

New York. Plus I assumed it would be a lot safer. But I discovered seasons have a dangerous side, called “inclement weather.” This is a scientific phrase meaning “weather that could kill you.” For example, the tornado, a side-effect of seemingly harmless thunderstorms. The tornado is defined by Webster’s as “a rotating column of air… whirling at destructively high speeds.” This translates into my own words as “a rotating column of air… that could kill me.”

When the sirens went off I ignored them and went on watching TV. But my boyfriend immediately leapt into Tornado Action while I sat dumb-founded on the couch, wondering why he didn’t want to watch the movie anymore. “Don’t you hear the sirens?” he cried.

I blinked in bewilderment and tried to concentrate. As a matter of fact, there was a high-pitched squealing siren that seemed rather urgent in its intensity. He gave me a look that clearly said, “Are you paralyzed, or just an idiot?” What he didn’t realize is that if I’d leapt up in a panic every time I heard an unexplained high-pitched siren when I lived in Manhattan, I never would have sat down the entire six years I was there. And I would’ve required even more prescription medication.

“That’s the tornado siren,” he explained, disassembling the couch and hauling cushions towards the coat closet. “We need to be prepared to take cover, if necessary. I think the coat closet is the best place.”

He seemed serious. Also, he was making a mess. Panic started to kick in as I began running a quick calculation of which valuable possessions to take into the closet. I vaguely wondered why Tom was suddenly so attached to the couch cushions.

I thought maybe we should get water and batteries and duct tape, since that’s what everybody says you should have in an emergency. I learned this from TV. Left to my own devices I would have selected chocolate chip cookies, Diet Coke, and a battery-powered television. While everybody else was saved by the life-giving powers of duct tape, I would have perished, full of sugar and soda and watching “Cheers” reruns.

But Tom explained that tornadoes are one of the few emergencies that do not require duct tape. We just needed to prepare to take cover, using the cushions as additional protection. In the meantime, he seemed to feel it was just fine to go on watching television, which is what I had already been doing. It seems to me that if all we needed to do at this point was watch TV, he could’ve kept the rest of it to himself, since I was now fighting the urge to curl into the fetal position and whimper.

For the next 30 minutes we watched Channel 5’s Doppler Radar. They are mighty proud of their Doppler Radar, and not too eager to divulge just what Doppler means, in order to keep a corner on the Doppler market. I was quite impressed with the Doppler Radar computer graphics. However, the “Storm Team” member at the controls must have had about twelve pots of coffee that night. He was zooming in, zooming out, spinning the map back and forth, and drawing arrows and lines and circles at such lightening speed that I started to feel slightly nauseous.

Turns out there never was an actual tornado that night. As far as I know, the only fallout from the excitement was the hospitalization of several people who were treated for severe dizziness after watching too much Doppler Radar. But before the next tornado hits I’m running out and getting myself a pair of ruby slippers. I’m no idiot.

© 2004 Karen Bertiger

Would You Hire This Person?

Except for the poverty, unemployment is great. You can get up late, watch crappy TV all day, and grocery shop when the lines aren’t aggravatingly long.

Well, it was great for about the first two months anyway. Then I started to notice that my brain was kind of rotting away. I was having trouble formulating sentences. I realized my world had become too narrow when I started stressing about emptying the dishwasher. It was the only thing I had to get done on a regular basis. To feel more secure, I would create a priority list: 1) empty dishwasher… 2) write tomorrow’s priority list.

Really I decided to start looking for a job so I’d have somebody to talk to, but I should have thought things through a little better. Interviewing is certainly not a medium for fascinating conversation or, for that matter, honesty. I am stretching the truth about my background or lack thereof while they are conveniently leaving out the downsides of the job, such as 26-hour work shifts and fluorescent lighting that has been known to cause severe facial ticks in 40% of their employees.

My most recent interview was conducted by a man who should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for Largest Stick Up the Ass. This guy made it look like it hurt to be happy. He didn’t laugh at any of my jokes – I mean, let’s face it, you’d have to be dead not to laugh at my jokes - and he was asking seriously stupid questions. Like, “Do you consider yourself an ethical person?” An ethical person would answer yes; an unethical person, due to a lack of ethics, would also answer yes. I mean… duh.

My favorite question is, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” There is no good way to answer this. “I want to be the president,” is no good because that gives them the impression that you will not be happy to be a lackey for the next 10 years, which is what they secretly have planned for this position. “I want to do the same tedious crap I’ve always done,” is no good either, because then they will think you lack the initiative to do the really awful grunt work, which is what they secretly have planned for this position.

At least interviewing here is a little less complicated, albeit less interesting, than it was when I lived in New York City. Since I usually had a bit of a walk to and from subways, I wore my sneakers and carried my heels in my bag, just like you see in the movies. Then I would change my heels in the elevator. But no matter how fast I was, the elevator doors always opened up to reveal me leaning over, balanced on one foot, with one heel on and my dirty socks tucked under my armpits. Once when I performed this little ballet in a packed elevator, a good looking suit remarked, “You’d make a terrible Superman.”

Also, people in New York tend to forget certain interviewing laws and guidelines, which is to say, they didn’t know there were any. In one interview I asked if any of my five (yes five) interviewers had any more questions for me and one executive piped up, “Have you ever been a man?” I think he was trying to be funny. The others at least had the decency to look horrified. They offered me the job, probably because they were afraid I’d sue them if they didn’t.

While this second type of interview could in fact land you in court, it does seem to me that employee turnover would be significantly reduced if we could ask the questions we really wanted to in job interviews. Like, “Do you foresee having any problems working for a manic-depressive alcoholic?” Or, “Are you against kissing your boss’s ass in order to get promoted?” And in return I could ask, “Are the rest of the employees here as dull as you?” or “Do company benefits include Krispy Kremes in the coffee room?”

I guess it’s a toss up. You can have interesting interviews with crazy law-breakers, or really boring by-the-book interviews that make you want to quit before you even get the job. In any case I doubt anybody who has read this article is going to be inviting me in for an interview any time soon.

But if you happen to be looking for a lazy smart ass who likes to talk about herself, isn’t shy about pointing out your shortcomings or those of the company, and doesn’t really like to work past 3 on Fridays, please let me know. Because there’s absolutely nothing to watch on TV and I’ve already emptied the dishwasher.

© 2004 Karen A. Bertiger

The Fine Art of Consumption

For Valentine’s Day I made my love a gigantic heart-shaped chocolate chip cookie. Just writing about it makes my mouth water. He thanked me profusely, complementing me on my baking and decorating skills and how delicious the cookie looked. And then he put it away.

If I am ever presented with a cookie, of any size, the only place I’m putting it is in my mouth. Post haste. I don’t understand how men can see something yummy and think, “I’ll eat this later.” I have no concept of waiting to eat anything that contains my recommended weekly fat and sugar content. When it comes to high-calorie foods, I operate not on the assumption that I could be dead tomorrow, but that I could die in the next few minutes.

But worse than being able to shelve a cookie, men just don’t seem to have a need to, every now and then, for good reason, consume their body weight in fried dough in one sitting. Like those late night “I’ve got the blues” binges involving a dozen Krispy Kremes. Well okay, it isn’t always because I have the blues. Sometimes I just have a bad day and need a good binge. Well, okay, it isn’t always because I had a bad day…

I know I’m not alone here, girls. I don’t mind admitting it to you, because I know you do it too – in private, and for good reason. In fact you’re probably crouched on the closet floor right now, next to a box of Ring Dings. I understand. We can’t let them see us. First of all, it is not a pretty sight. Second of all, we could never again get away with bitching about how fat we feel. Men don’t understand that we can shovel food into our faces at warp speed with one hand, while with the other grab a chunk of wobbly flesh whining, “I have got to go to the gym. I am such a porker.” If you did that in front of a guy, he’d say, “If you don’t like the way you look, stop eating all that crap!” Whereas a woman would say, “What fat? Are you insane? You’re a stick. Look at this,” grabbing a hunk of her own flank in sisterly solidarity.

Men, I feel your pain here. I realize that what we’re asking for is completely irrational and, frankly, you can’t win anyway. We demand you “help us out” by steering us clear of the cookie aisle in the grocery store, but you’d better ignore the sudden cravings that send us on a special 30 minute trip out of our way to our favorite fudge store – God help you if you say a word in that case. How are you supposed to know the difference? You aren’t. But you’d better.

I am luckier than most. I have a man sufficiently savvy (or maybe just experienced) to say, “Is this when I am supposed to try to stop you, or is this when I am supposed to tell you I love you no matter what, and you’re not fat, and you should eat whatever you want and do whatever makes you happy?” when I make a nose-dive for a box of brownie mix after wailing that my ass is the widest in three counties. Even a guy sharp enough to pose this query before proceeding, however, can still get into trouble if the woman’s really in the mood to twist your words into punishment material.

I managed to wait a whole day and a half before turning to my sweetie on the couch and, with the strain of the past 36 hours barely contained in my high-pitched voice as I tried to sound as casual as possible, asked, “So, can I have a bite of your cookie?” He replied, “Of course, baby!” as if I were crazy for asking – whereas a woman would have bitten my hand off if I made any motion toward her cookie, as well she should. It would have been tacky of me to eat his whole cookie, considering it was my gift to him, so I just took a big bite. Besides, I didn’t want him to see how truly insane I could have gone on that gigantic heart-shaped, icing-laced delicacy.

Three days later that damned cookie, minus one big bite, is still in the fridge. I have not slept in that time just thinking about it, sitting there, sugary and delicious. Also I’m a little cramped from crouching here in the closet for so long.

© 2004 Karen A. Bertiger

Invasion of the South

When I announced to my family that I would be joining my boyfriend in Alabama and leaving

New York City behind me, there were mixed reactions. Some said, “Are you freaking kidding me?” while others said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Friends and strangers alike offered their unsolicited opinions, which mostly ran along the lines of, “You’ll never fit in there.” (question: do they even have bagels in Alabama?” Answer: "No.")

But my uncle, who is not one to dispense advice or wisdom of the How to Live Your Life variety – although will not hesitate to dispense a violent opinion on What Movies You Should Hate – said something that made up for the negative vibes I was getting from so many. “We’re not a family of risk-takers,” he said. Which is true; they all still live in New York City. Or, as in the case of my grandmother,

New Jersey, which is where you go when you get too tired to deal with the City full time but can’t bear to be too far away from the action. Although I’m sure he felt slightly alarmed by my decision, he was fully supportive. However, when I asked if he’d come visit me, there was a lot of hemming and hawing and not-too-subtle changing of the subject. My uncle is of the Woody Allen variety New Yorker, who thinks the U.S. consists of two states: New York, and Not New York. Not New York is not a place worth his time, unless he has to go there on business.

Since I’ve moved, some people have changed their tune a bit. When I go home for visits, and to get my City fix, my friends gather round to hear fables of growing green things called Trees, and monsters that live in your sink and chop up left-over food so you don’t have to put it in the regular garbage and stink up the kitchen. I am asked over and over to repeat the Tale of Two Bathrooms, in which I regale them with stories about homes so spacious, they actually have room for more than one commode.

Friends listen in awe while I tell them of my driving escapades, of how I am not limited in the number of errands I run or the amount of groceries I can buy by what I can carry the quarter mile and four flights of stairs back to my apartment. I tell them of warehouse-sized stores where you can buy toilet paper in a bulk-size that rivals their closet space.

Of course, they don’t all believe me. Some of my tales of suburbia are just too outrageous to be true. Swimming pools that are outdoors, for example. Well, swimming pools, period. One friend fainted when I told her how much I now pay for a gym membership.

I have created a new breed of New Yorkers who are starting to think seriously about Alabama, a state they were aware of only peripherally and usually in conjunction with an off-color joke. My 10-year-old cousin now begs her father on a regular basis to please take a trip to

Alabama. My uncle just looks pained during these conversations. “Haha!” I laugh. “Ever think your kid would beg you to take her to Alabama?” “No,” he responds despondently. “You can thank me later,” I tell him.

My mother is now thinking of renting a winter home here. There was a wooshing noise as a collective series of jaws dropped at hearing that news. The family squirmed even more. It was bad enough that I had moved to the South. Now I was influencing others. The other day my grandmother called and said, “You know, I’m sick of the snow here. Maybe if your mom gets a place there, I’ll come too.”

Soon they’ll all start flocking here and before you know it, we’ll be uprooting the trees and lobbying for a subway system (none of us know how to drive that well). On the bright side, if enough of My People do migrate here, Alabama may finally get a decent Chinese restaurant. For those of you unfamiliar, decent Chinese is never buffet-style and, if I may further enlighten you, jell-o is never found on the menu.

New Yorkers, I’ve discovered, aren’t the only ones who like to offer unsolicited opinions. Since I moved here, I have been told that I will hate it for 18 months, 2 years, 6 months… and then I will love it and will never want to go back to New York.

I don’t know about never. But a girl could certainly get used to two bathrooms.