Guest Blogger - Sonia Sunshine: American Gothic

Imagine how pleased I was to be asked to guest blog for Gunfighter.  I think the only thing his blog is missing is an audio clip that auto plays upon opening that says, “Make my day”.

Can’t remember exactly how we first “met”.

There’s several reasons I like Gunfighter.  He’s a loving husband and father.  He teaches Sunday School (which takes  dedication).  And probably most of all, he’s very passionate about his views and if you happen to have a contrasting view, he doesn’t simply dismiss it by saying, “you’re wrong and I’m right”, he’s one of those people who would rather agree to disagree.

That’s how I am.  You have to respect other people, even if you are totally against what they stand for.  Tolerance is a good thing.  And Gunfighter has plenty of it, he’s very likeable in that way. 

And, not sure, I may be in the minority of  his females readers that has shot a Glock???  There was a Mountain Dew can giving me some trouble…I had to take it down.

But I digress…not sure what has him reading at my blog because I get a little ADD over there.  I talk about a barrage of idiotic topics and throw in something serious every so often just to keep people guessing.  (I have four kids, blogging gets the cobwebs out)

However, you folks out in D.C. like me.  You like me more than any other geographical location in my stats.  The D.C. area has far and away my largest number of readers each month.  Weird, huh?  I’d like to think that, perhaps, politicians far and wide read my post about the Iowa caucuses (where I did some guerilla reporting) and have stuck around for the tattoo party  and blog prom.

Maybe not.

But I do have a story that will prove that the folks in our nation’s capital are some of the nicest you’ll ever find. 

Hubby and I have traveled a fair amount. Mostly the US but some venturing into Canada, Mexico and a tropical island or two if the mood strikes. Hubby has been all over Europe and his time, of course, in Iraq, but anyway…(he said there's a reason there's no timeshares in Iraq, I'll just take his word on that). Now, I’d call us pretty average, every day type people. We’re comfortable with travel. We don’t get hung up with language barriers, we don’t have any major travel nightmares really. So, OK, we’re average. We’re college educated, we have all our teeth, we wear deodorant…but we are not beneath playing the “hick” card when necessary.

What do I mean by that?

In other words, we’ve found that in a lot of major metro areas, there are people who never leave given metro area. Why should they, they feel, everything cool is there! Therefore, they know nothing about “flyover” territory. They’ve never been. Traipsing across this great country of ours, we’ve really found that urbanites are really more ignorant than their suburban counterparts because they assume they already know it all, sight unseen.

Example: I won’t name the city (I told Dr. S about this once on his blog, HE KNOWS), but while there on a trip during high school, we (Kim and myself) were shopping and the saleslady could tell that we were “not from there” because we did not have an accent.

Saleslady: Where y’all from?
Me: Iowa
Saleslady: Isn’t it always cold there?

Me: *blink blink* (inner monologue commences) Did I say Iowa or did Ross Ice Shelf escape my lips? Pretty darn sure I said Iowa. She must be hearing impaired. Or, wait a tic, she only got schoolin’ ‘til 6th grade so she could go work in her dad’s scrap metal shop! (end inner monologue, because I am meaner and more sarcastic in my own mind, I try to use my “edit” button when stuff actually comes flying out of my mouth).

Kim: Uh, we actually had a drought this summer. (This was 1988, mind you)
Saleslady: (vacant expression) Oh. What do y’all do there?
Me: Some people farm.
Saleslady: Like what kind of animals?
Me: Oh, cows or hogs.
Saleslady: Hogs???? Is that like pigs?

We were rendered speechless. A deep and abiding sense of pity settles in and we wonder if the poor dear had smacked her head on a parking meter attempting to enter the mall that morning or perhaps she was the origin of the phrase “not the sharpest tool in the shed”. Come to think of it, I had never heard that phrase before 1988, it could very well be because of her. I fear, right now, someone, somewhere, is spoon-feeding her tapioca. She was really too dumb to be left to her own devices for long.

Anyhoo, back to traveling and pulling out the hick card.

Hubby and I were going on a business trip (for him) to Halifax, Nova Scotia. We flew into Binghamton, NY a few days early to leave the boys with my dad and stepmom who were going to watch them for us during our trip. The night before our flight on to Halifax, a huge storm blows thru and our travel day is messed up from the get go. Our flight into Washington DC to connect on to Nova Scotia is delayed. So by the time we get to DC, its noon and our new flight to Nova Scotia will not leave for 6 hours. That’s a long ass time to do nothing in Dulles airport. So, we leave. We hop a cab and head, not too awfully far, to a shopping area complete with multiplex theater. We make arrangements with our cabbie as to the exact time to pick us up again in the same spot. He gives us the nifty little card with his information and tells us the spot to stand in so he sees us, yadda yadda.

We have a lovely lunch. We wander a bit and window shop. Then we think, heck, we still have tons of time, let’s see a movie. We settle on What Lies Beneath, that sounded pretty entertaining. I was doing movie reviews at the time and hadn’t seen it but had everything else, if I recall, so that was it.

We come out of the movie and find we have about half an hour until our cab is supposed to get us. So we wander to our assigned pick up spot. Half an hour comes and goes. No biggie. We were having him get us plenty early.

Then we wait.

And wait.

Why did we leave the airport?

The movie kind of sucked, if MICHELLE PFIEFFER MAKES ME MISS MY PLANE, WHY I OUGHTA…

We get out the handy dandy cabbie card. And call it telling them cabbie dude is way late. They don’t know what we’re talking about, they’ll send another cab which will be there in half an hour. That would be cutting it too close but we tell them to go ahead and do it, we must get to the airport somehow, whether we make our flight or not.

I’m not the kind of gal who likes to miss her plane.  So I’m like, “OK, hubby, we’re going to find some stranger to take us to the airport. There’s a lot of people coming out of these shops, surely SOMEBODY will help us out!”  Hubby was all, “Be my guest, I’m going to watch for the cab.”  As with the Y chromosome issue about not stopping to ask for directions, he is also has the “don’t ask strangers for help” thing.  Yeah, dudes, I’m throwing you collectively under the bus.

Girls…you know when you want something done, you have to do it yourself, right?
I like to think I can assess a situation fairly quickly if need be. A college age looking girl comes out of a store. I scurry her direction.  “Excuse me, we (I motion toward hubby who looks mortified) got ditched by our cab and need to get to Dulles airport, can you give us a ride?” and she sort of looks me over to make sure I don’t seem like a axe wielding serial killer.

“It’s OK.”

Wait for it. The manipulative hick maneuver.

“We’re from Iowa.”

Then she gets this look of relief, just like the doorman at Emerald City wondering why Dorothy didn’t just tell him in the first place she was wearing the ruby slippers Glinda gave her!!!

“And, if you wouldn’t mind speeding just a little bit, I’ll give you fifty bucks.”

So we squeeze into her “college girl” vehicle, what with one functioning door and folded down backseat that won’t go back up. But we weren’t bitching, we maybe, just maybe, were going to catch our plane. In the ten minute ride we find out that, yes, she is a college student and her parents weren’t from Iowa but some neighboring state I can’t recall but Wisconsin is ringing a bell. And not only that, but she wouldn’t take our money, so I think hubby snuck it inside her running shoes laying in the back seat. Anyway, we wanted to adopt her and she took a huge chance giving us a ride. But, you know, that hick card comes in handy when you need it. We were the last people to board our flight, they closed the doors immediately behind us and informed us that another five minutes and we’d have been on a flight the following morning.

Lessons Learned:

• Don’t leave the airport
• Not even for Michelle Pfieffer
• If necessary, play the hick card so you don’t spend the night in an airport
• I hope my daughters aren’t as trusting as this girl was when they’re in college