Everyone knows everything everyone else does small towns, although they live quite a distance apart. One day, in my best redneck accent (I do voices quite well, and though it’s dead-on, you’ll rarely meet anyone who sounds as inbred as I do when I do it), I quipped, “By God, you could fart at one end o’ th’ county and by the time ya git to th’ other end, ever’body knows what it smelt like!”
They died laughing, although they didn’t like that I said “fart.”
Good thing they don’t hear some of the other words I say on a regular basis…
One of the things I’ve always known is that there are many factions in small towns. There are people who it’s okay to talk to, and there are people who it’s not. That’s kind can get tricky, because quite honestly, I talk to everybody and don’t care about that kind of stuff. Generally, people don’t bother to get upset with me about it, because I’m a “nice guy.”
One of the unique things, tho, is the constant use of the archaic word “queer” to describe these people you’re not supposed to talk to or “watch out” for. Although, it has nothing to do with someone’s sexual preference, and is pronounced quite differently…
One day, I asked, “Quare? How ya spell ‘at? Like ‘square’ without the ‘s’?”
This resulted in the age-old, universal, one-fingered gesture in my general direction.
To which I replied, “Well, ain’t that mighty Christian of ya?!”
Also good for a laugh.
A couple of weeks ago, after hearing about how everyone in town was “queer,” someone asked me, “So, Mark, how ya like it here?”
I said, “I dunno. They’s too many quares.”
“What?” they asked, shocked.
“Yeah, by God, ever’body I talk to, they tell me, he’s quare, she’s quare, and by God, they even told me you was, too!”
The blank look was priceless.
Give it a minute, give it a minute… Yep, they died laughing. 😉
Another incident happened when an elderly gentleman came up and said, “Oh, man, it’s a beautiful day! I’m gonna home and work in my garden! Do you have a garden, Mark?”
“No, sir,” I replied. Keeping a straight face, I added, “My girl won’t let me play with hoes.”
One person who overheard the conversation cupped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. It took him a minute to catch on.
Now every time I see him, he laughs, and tells me, “Stay away from them hoes!”
Another day, I was answering questions about some software when I leaned forward and hit my funny bone on the edge of the desk. My uncontrollable reaction was to blurt out, “Motherf…” at which point, I caught myself and stopped the profanity midstream.
She ignored it, and continued her explanation of the software issue without skipping a beat.
I gave her the answer and showed her an alternative method to do what she was asking.
She responded to the answer, and added, “And, by the way, I know that must have hurt. But next time, just go ahead and finish the word because we all knew what you were thinking, anyway.”
Laughter is always good medicine.
And being just slightly off-color does tend to relax even the most uptight people.
Older people, especially, seem to enjoy it even more…
