Last fall, for reasons still unexplained, my mom moved to Birmingham, Ala., after living in Washington, D.C., for 30 years.
I visited her last week during fall break, despite exhausting every possible excuse not to head deeper into the Deep South: “Sorry, Mom, I can’t come home for fall break. I have a paper I have to work on.” Then I tried diseases: cancer, Ebola, chlamydia. She still wouldn’t buy my excuses
“You have date rape psychosis, eh?” She said,” Charles, for God’s sake stop being a candy ass.”
I couldn’t argue with that. But once I was down in Alabama, I wish I’d put up a bigger fight.
I think the biggest culture shock to me was not the red dirt that stained my dog’s white face and legs rusty brown, the surprisingly orgasmic Mexican food, or the mumbled speech of the natives, but the absence of Army of Darkness from the local Blockbuster.
The abundance of local wildlife meant that my cats had a field day. A slew of small mammals and birds fell victim. One rodent in particular had an especially traumatic experience: my dog and I were lying on the sofa one afternoon, an act we came to perfect, when my cat came into the house carrying a limp chipmunk. I didn’t notice, and continued to watch television. A few minutes later the chipmunk came bounding into the living room with my cat chasing it. Then, the chipmunk ran back out of the room, and dove under the kitchen stove where it stayed, under siege, for the next four days. My mom named him Roy, and I kind of got attached to the little guy.
I got a haircut the day before I returned to the college. It wasn’t so bad, aside from the extremely forceful shampoo I received from a woman who treated my scalp like a scratching post. The guy who cut my hair used scissors that made it feel as though my hair was being ripped out of its roots, but he was extremely chatty. He also had a sheet of paper on his desk, which read: “Brunettes – dream about it. Blondes – Talk about it. Red heads – live it. Dare to be different: go red!”
I always thought I’d be happier eating healthily or going hang gliding, but maybe I should just “go red.”
The one good thing which came out of that week in ‘Bama was that I learned I was a multi-tasking Frankenstein. I never knew I could walk the dog while drinking apple juice, smoking a cigarette, and holding my CD player at the same time. Discoveries like that are one of the perks of boredom, I suppose. But just like the massive cockroaches, time is something that I never have a shortage of.Charles Haslam is a junior majoring in English.