Being Unconventional Where The Conventions Are Really Different

In search of a grocery store, I drove from the small town we're visiting to a neighboring, somewhat larger town. As I waited patiently at a red light a pickup truck passed across my view. With the observant eyes of a youngster taking in every new sight in a strange place, Steph watched the truck make the turn and proceed down the road behind us.

"A refrigerator just fell out of that truck," she said.

I looked and saw the brake lights lit up as the truck pulled over to the side of the road. A fridge lay on its side in the roadway. The truck pulled around through a parking lot, stopped near the fridge, and two men got out and hefted it back in the bed.

If there was ever a place I would see a sight like that, I knew this was it. It's a place where, just as much as when he was alive, Billie Mays is a trusted source of quality products. Where the Magic Jack is considered the latest in high tech communications. Where running along a roadway is considered an aberration and running in the roadway makes you a fair target even with that nearby billboard expressing the sanctity of life and the shame of abortion. How could anyone be stupid enough to run in a roadway? And barefoot at that.

It's a place where you're easily mocked. Your manner, your dress, and your speech mark you as someone who doesn't belong. And it's place where the easily mocked can reciprocate in kind.

I wondered out loud about why the fridge wasn't strapped down and how they were going to explain what happened to it.

In a spot-on backwoods voice, Steph answered. "It fay-ell."

I tell ya, it's like bein' in a whole 'nuther country.