Friday
the 17th.
Since I have a page for cherries and
strawberries, I decided to make one for
watermelon too. After all, our boys enjoy
nothing more than a face full of watermelon. What beautiful weather in
Mayberry this week. I've thoroughly enjoyed riding
the bike everyday. The boys played on Miss
Etta's playground this morning, then went to the pool this afternoon (have they
been every day this week? I didn't post the laundry list on Monday and
without it we can't remember). Jackson had
karate, then it was off to
Winston-Salem to finally meet dear little
Ella Joyce. We
were afraid to get around the Joyce family for so long because of the alien
stomach virus. But we finally got to meet Ella and she is perfectly
adorable. The three boys played well together, it was a nice visit.
One of the very southern small town things about Mayberry is the corner preacher. On the corner of our very quite Main Street stands a man yelling, and I do mean YELLING. And first, before you get offended, let me say that you can remove religion from this discussion, because a person standing on the street corner yelling at strangers is a little kooky and it doesn't matter if he's yelling about God, the Green Bay Packers, or Martians. I'm not even positive that this guy is yelling about religion, because it's hard to actually listen to what someone is saying when they are shouting at the top of their lungs. So I am not making any comment about religion here because 99.999% of the people in any religion wouldn't stand on the corner shouting at the top of their lungs at strangers, I'm just talking about kooks that yell in public. And I'm not talking about people preaching in public, we should all be able to protest, preach, picket, and say whatever you want in public, but being around someone YELLING, you have to admit, it's a little uncomfortable. The guys rotate in some sort of tag team system and yell through the cold of winter and the heat of summer. They actually may prefer these extreme temps, I'm not sure, but it does add a certain dramatic effect. So if you are pushing your kids in a stroller you have to stop three quarters of the way down Main Street and turn around so that your children aren't freaked out by the man yelling at the top of his lungs. And I would love to know what people passing through town think about this. The first time I drove Amy through town, back when we were just dating, the KKK were actually standing on all four corners of this intersection, robes and all. It was the first and only time that I have ever seen this outside of television and the movies, but it probably took years for Amy to truly believe that it didn't happen all the time. I didn't even know what to say at the time, I think I was so shocked I was speechless. Were it to happen again, I think I would not be able to resist being confrontational, but on that day I couldn't think of anything other than "Oh my God, I'll never get Amy to come back here again." As I recall the KKK kooks were from Georgia because even people that kooky are too embarrassed to act that stupid in front of people they know. But back to the yelling man, I always wonder what the businesses on the end of the street think, because you have to know the majority of customers walking along Main Street are going to avoid that section like the plague. I mean, what could be worse than making eye contact with someone screaming about how you are going to you-know-where? It's an awkward situation because in a town our size you typically do try to make eye contact and speak to people you walk past. I realize that they yell that loud so that everyone on Main Street can here them, but if you happen to be right next to them, it's like being next to the speakers at a Metallica concert, sometimes it's more comfortable to be in the upper deck, you know what I mean? And that brings me to today. Here's the scene...You are stuck at the stoplight, on your motorcycle (which is the equivalent of just standing there) right next to the yelling man and you can just feel the spit flying past you, you've got hippie long hair and a "no dubbya" sticker on the back of your helmet. Without saying what I did or didn't do, the question is "would you slowly rev the engine on your motorcycle to see if the yelling man tries to get louder too?"