Southern Boy
I'm from the South. Good ol' Southern boy. Coming from the South means that I look like I do. That's why I've got this gut here. It's like I'm carrying a baby. Here's my baby, feel it kick, feel it kick. Bless his little heart.
That's one thing people don't understand about REAL Southern boys. Our food. It is the most vile, disgusting thing imaginable, yet we like it. We don't like it because it's good. Oh no! We like it because we grow to like it. Spend 10 years of your life eating instant taters and you'll know what I mean. It's damn good eatin'.
I grew up in a southern home eating southern food, living in a southern house, with a southern mother, father, and two brothers, though one didn't actually live with us, just hung out there... couple nights a week. You know how it is. But don't get me wrong, I didn't just live off of fried green tomatoes. I actually had variety! Because my family was one of those new fangled progressives. Or at least they tried to be. Therefore, I had many different foreign foods. Why, I even had Mexican. No, not tacos. Mexican. Let's not forget Eye-talian. That's Italian for those of you who don't speak Deep South yet. Don't worry, you'll learn. All you have to do is bang your head against your handy wood-burned house sign as you walk through your door into your house for a few years and eventually you'll have a 2nd grade education. You know what those are, right? They take a piece of wood, then get a soldering gun and burn their name and address onto a sign, then hang it over their door. As if anyone from the street can actually see it! No, I secretly thought for a few years that it was actually there to remind my family that we lived there and not in the house a few doors down, which happened to look nicer.
And let us not forget the night of vegetables! Consisting of Macaroni and Cheese, or as my family called it, the Cheesy Noodles, green beans, instant taters, baked beans, or pork and beans, and sometimes sweet corn, if my dad happened to get paid that day by mowing a lawn or two. It was an entire supper made from boxes of stuff, and cans of stuff. All you needed was a can opener, and some pots and pans to cook it in!
Oh! And Spam! But not REAL Spam. The fake kind. You know, the one where it actually calls the stuff “luncheon meat”. It's a cocktail of meats that nobody wanted, sprinkled with about a pound of salt, and cooked until it changes to a nice skin tone. I swear, take Spam and put it in a white guy's hand, it's as if it never existed! And if the guy is Southern, keep your eye on him otherwise it really WON'T exist, except in his rather large stomach.
Pizza! Let us not forget it. Oh savior of hungry nights. I remember my dad never actually ordered pizza. He just kinda surprised us with it. He knew the Dominos delivery guy, and whenever the guy got a bad call, or a canceled pizza, or some kids pulling a prank, he'd just sell the pizzas for really cheap to my dad. So it was ALWAYS a surprise each time. I remember picking out disgusting-looking black, red, and pink things which my father never really could explain successfully what it was. So we'd end up having things like pepperoni and anchovies, or Canadian bacon with peppers and onions, god how I hate onions, or chicken and.. for some reason, liver. No, Dominos doesn't have liver on their menu, but it somehow ended up on my pizza. And yes, we ate it.
Chicken! Fried Chicken. The good stuff. I hate to admit it, but yes, I love chicken. Especially fried. There's something about that incredibly tasty skin that makes me crawl with the joy of hundreds of years of inbred white trash DNA. Or maybe I'm secretly black. I'm not really sure yet. Anyway, chicken. DELICIOUS. But my parents were really odd about it. You see, for the life of me, I can't understand why they bought already boxed, cooked, fried chicken, then took it home, opened the box, then fried it again! Re-fried chicken! Only a southerner could be this stupid. To take home a box of fried chicken, then fry it again in a vat of grease. Once, I asked my mother why she fried the chicken again. After all, she only needed to just heat it up, since it was already fried. She looked at me as if I told her Jesus was being crucified right now outside our front door. It was the face of utter disbelief. And you know how southerners feel about Jesus. It's like they marry the guy, but forget him until some shit's gone down, in which case they start spouting “JESUS!” as if it were a cuss-word. No, not “curse”. “CUSS.”
My mother said, “'Cause they ain't enough grease on it when it comes out the box.”
Mexican. I never had tacos. I had “Mexican”. I swear, I really did think it was exotic food though, because I never thought it was okay to eat a person. My dad would bring home the meat, and I never questioned him when he said “We're having Mexican tonight.” I'd look at the meat and see all the squigglies in them and assume that's what calf muscles looked like after they were chopped off. I could just imagine my dad, only an hour before, beating up a Mexican, then chopping off his calf muscle. I could see him as he put it in the little plastic container, then wiped his knife on his blue jeans like he always did, then get into the car and drive home. Needless to say, I never saw Mexicans in a good light up until the 8th grade. I'd look at my class mates and wonder, “Are we going to have you for dinner?” Or maybe their mom, or their mother. And that shit would be really tender too, so I bet my dad beat those Mexicans up real good to tenderize them. At least, I hope he didn't go after the children. I mean, they're tender and all, but that's like taking a fire cracker and sticking it up a cat's butt-- it just isn't right.
And let me tell you about Eye-talian night. It was spaghetti. Not even spaghetti and meatballs. It was just noodles with a tomato paste. Sometimes with meat, mostly without. Tasted kinda like the Mexican meat, but how the hell should I know? Anyway, we'd get our plates, put the noodles on it, then the watered down paste, then a piece of bread or two-- not even toast, BREAD. And then, like any normal family, we'd sit in the living room at the coffee table while we watched tv. Sometimes it would be our own rooms, depending on how many ants were in the living room at the time.
Anyway, that's the setting for a story about me and my little brother. The story is intended to describe how our relationship was at the time, but I can honestly say, it's basically the same now.
I was walking from the kitchen through the dining room, which we never used, so we just called it.. room. I was carrying my plate in front of me, moving along at a steady pace. Now realize this, the noodles are extremely slippery, well lubricated, because, I'm southern. So should I stop, the noodles on the plate will continue to go. Some of you can imagine what is about to happen. The rest of you are idiots-- or maybe you're just related to my family. Anyway, it becomes a balancing act when you inevitably do stop to sit down and eat. You have to tilt this way and that until you come to a perfect stopping position, in which case, like a crane, you have to slowly lower your plate, keeping it level, until it comes to a stop, which means you've hit something-- usually a table, or the floor. My brother is walking in the opposite direction to get his food in the kitchen. It is then when he decides to cash in on his free punch-of-the-day. I need not say more.
But honestly, we get along great now. We didn't back then. When was the last time you looked over at your family member while they were sleeping and thought, “I just want to bite his nose off.” Or maybe you thought, “If I peed on his bed, he'd think he peed himself!” This is one of the many things that goes through my mind, even today, only it's in a more mature fashion, usually involving tongs, slippers, and a case of Red Bull. It gives you wings my ass. Which reminds me, I wonder if you ingested it anally, if it would give you wings on your ass. Hey, that's a good commercial idea. Can you imagine one of those long-nosed greek-looking freaks on their commercials taking a can of Red Bull up his ass? “'Right! Ungh! Red Buuu---whoa!--ll. It gives you wings!” And then his ass goes flying off. He's just kinda hanging on for dear life.
And now the Los Angeles types are thinking about Red Bull enemas. I can see you now, with your Red Bull in one hand, an enema in the other, and you're eying them both... If only-- If only it would fit, you think. And then you find yourself in a doctor's office trying to explain how you ruptured your anus.
Excuse me, I seem to have gone off on a tangent. I always wondered what a tangent really meant. I know what it means mathematically, but how can you go off on a tangent while staying true to the mathematical meaning? I mean, by going off on a tangent, am I somehow on a line that intersects a circle at exactly 1 point that is a perfect 90 degrees from the center of the circle? Or am I doing something else? I always thought tangent looked a little orange, because it sounds like tangerine, which happens to be orange. When the geometry teacher taught me about tangents, I always pictured the circle as being an orange tangerine. Somehow, I always left geometry class hungry.
Which brings me back to southern food. Gravy. What idiot came up with this shit? Was it some maniac that had just replaced his metallic truck bed with a wooden one? Earth to red neck. Wood rots. Specially when it rains.
I bet it was someone like my grandma, who had finished cooking breakfast and didn't feel like putting the grease into a giant container for the next time she cooked, and decided to be lazy, and put some flour in it, maybe a little salt and pepper, and maybe a little more grease, and a couple of lumps, and then suddenly put it on the plate and BEHOLD! “What is this brownish gray stuff, Ma?”
“Gra-- Grrrr-- Ground-- No-- Gravy! Yeah, that's gravy right there, now go ahead and eat it, it's good for ya.”
And that's all she had to say to get us to eat that crap. And somehow it caught on. Women everywhere, after a long tiring day of cooking, took their left over grease, and unlike their fore-mothers, they decided not to save it, instead turning it into the fastest artery clogging meal on the entire face of the planet. Biscuits and Gravy. Behold. The feminist movement. Southern style.
That's one thing people don't understand about REAL Southern boys. Our food. It is the most vile, disgusting thing imaginable, yet we like it. We don't like it because it's good. Oh no! We like it because we grow to like it. Spend 10 years of your life eating instant taters and you'll know what I mean. It's damn good eatin'.
I grew up in a southern home eating southern food, living in a southern house, with a southern mother, father, and two brothers, though one didn't actually live with us, just hung out there... couple nights a week. You know how it is. But don't get me wrong, I didn't just live off of fried green tomatoes. I actually had variety! Because my family was one of those new fangled progressives. Or at least they tried to be. Therefore, I had many different foreign foods. Why, I even had Mexican. No, not tacos. Mexican. Let's not forget Eye-talian. That's Italian for those of you who don't speak Deep South yet. Don't worry, you'll learn. All you have to do is bang your head against your handy wood-burned house sign as you walk through your door into your house for a few years and eventually you'll have a 2nd grade education. You know what those are, right? They take a piece of wood, then get a soldering gun and burn their name and address onto a sign, then hang it over their door. As if anyone from the street can actually see it! No, I secretly thought for a few years that it was actually there to remind my family that we lived there and not in the house a few doors down, which happened to look nicer.
And let us not forget the night of vegetables! Consisting of Macaroni and Cheese, or as my family called it, the Cheesy Noodles, green beans, instant taters, baked beans, or pork and beans, and sometimes sweet corn, if my dad happened to get paid that day by mowing a lawn or two. It was an entire supper made from boxes of stuff, and cans of stuff. All you needed was a can opener, and some pots and pans to cook it in!
Oh! And Spam! But not REAL Spam. The fake kind. You know, the one where it actually calls the stuff “luncheon meat”. It's a cocktail of meats that nobody wanted, sprinkled with about a pound of salt, and cooked until it changes to a nice skin tone. I swear, take Spam and put it in a white guy's hand, it's as if it never existed! And if the guy is Southern, keep your eye on him otherwise it really WON'T exist, except in his rather large stomach.
Pizza! Let us not forget it. Oh savior of hungry nights. I remember my dad never actually ordered pizza. He just kinda surprised us with it. He knew the Dominos delivery guy, and whenever the guy got a bad call, or a canceled pizza, or some kids pulling a prank, he'd just sell the pizzas for really cheap to my dad. So it was ALWAYS a surprise each time. I remember picking out disgusting-looking black, red, and pink things which my father never really could explain successfully what it was. So we'd end up having things like pepperoni and anchovies, or Canadian bacon with peppers and onions, god how I hate onions, or chicken and.. for some reason, liver. No, Dominos doesn't have liver on their menu, but it somehow ended up on my pizza. And yes, we ate it.
Chicken! Fried Chicken. The good stuff. I hate to admit it, but yes, I love chicken. Especially fried. There's something about that incredibly tasty skin that makes me crawl with the joy of hundreds of years of inbred white trash DNA. Or maybe I'm secretly black. I'm not really sure yet. Anyway, chicken. DELICIOUS. But my parents were really odd about it. You see, for the life of me, I can't understand why they bought already boxed, cooked, fried chicken, then took it home, opened the box, then fried it again! Re-fried chicken! Only a southerner could be this stupid. To take home a box of fried chicken, then fry it again in a vat of grease. Once, I asked my mother why she fried the chicken again. After all, she only needed to just heat it up, since it was already fried. She looked at me as if I told her Jesus was being crucified right now outside our front door. It was the face of utter disbelief. And you know how southerners feel about Jesus. It's like they marry the guy, but forget him until some shit's gone down, in which case they start spouting “JESUS!” as if it were a cuss-word. No, not “curse”. “CUSS.”
My mother said, “'Cause they ain't enough grease on it when it comes out the box.”
Mexican. I never had tacos. I had “Mexican”. I swear, I really did think it was exotic food though, because I never thought it was okay to eat a person. My dad would bring home the meat, and I never questioned him when he said “We're having Mexican tonight.” I'd look at the meat and see all the squigglies in them and assume that's what calf muscles looked like after they were chopped off. I could just imagine my dad, only an hour before, beating up a Mexican, then chopping off his calf muscle. I could see him as he put it in the little plastic container, then wiped his knife on his blue jeans like he always did, then get into the car and drive home. Needless to say, I never saw Mexicans in a good light up until the 8th grade. I'd look at my class mates and wonder, “Are we going to have you for dinner?” Or maybe their mom, or their mother. And that shit would be really tender too, so I bet my dad beat those Mexicans up real good to tenderize them. At least, I hope he didn't go after the children. I mean, they're tender and all, but that's like taking a fire cracker and sticking it up a cat's butt-- it just isn't right.
And let me tell you about Eye-talian night. It was spaghetti. Not even spaghetti and meatballs. It was just noodles with a tomato paste. Sometimes with meat, mostly without. Tasted kinda like the Mexican meat, but how the hell should I know? Anyway, we'd get our plates, put the noodles on it, then the watered down paste, then a piece of bread or two-- not even toast, BREAD. And then, like any normal family, we'd sit in the living room at the coffee table while we watched tv. Sometimes it would be our own rooms, depending on how many ants were in the living room at the time.
Anyway, that's the setting for a story about me and my little brother. The story is intended to describe how our relationship was at the time, but I can honestly say, it's basically the same now.
I was walking from the kitchen through the dining room, which we never used, so we just called it.. room. I was carrying my plate in front of me, moving along at a steady pace. Now realize this, the noodles are extremely slippery, well lubricated, because, I'm southern. So should I stop, the noodles on the plate will continue to go. Some of you can imagine what is about to happen. The rest of you are idiots-- or maybe you're just related to my family. Anyway, it becomes a balancing act when you inevitably do stop to sit down and eat. You have to tilt this way and that until you come to a perfect stopping position, in which case, like a crane, you have to slowly lower your plate, keeping it level, until it comes to a stop, which means you've hit something-- usually a table, or the floor. My brother is walking in the opposite direction to get his food in the kitchen. It is then when he decides to cash in on his free punch-of-the-day. I need not say more.
But honestly, we get along great now. We didn't back then. When was the last time you looked over at your family member while they were sleeping and thought, “I just want to bite his nose off.” Or maybe you thought, “If I peed on his bed, he'd think he peed himself!” This is one of the many things that goes through my mind, even today, only it's in a more mature fashion, usually involving tongs, slippers, and a case of Red Bull. It gives you wings my ass. Which reminds me, I wonder if you ingested it anally, if it would give you wings on your ass. Hey, that's a good commercial idea. Can you imagine one of those long-nosed greek-looking freaks on their commercials taking a can of Red Bull up his ass? “'Right! Ungh! Red Buuu---whoa!--ll. It gives you wings!” And then his ass goes flying off. He's just kinda hanging on for dear life.
And now the Los Angeles types are thinking about Red Bull enemas. I can see you now, with your Red Bull in one hand, an enema in the other, and you're eying them both... If only-- If only it would fit, you think. And then you find yourself in a doctor's office trying to explain how you ruptured your anus.
Excuse me, I seem to have gone off on a tangent. I always wondered what a tangent really meant. I know what it means mathematically, but how can you go off on a tangent while staying true to the mathematical meaning? I mean, by going off on a tangent, am I somehow on a line that intersects a circle at exactly 1 point that is a perfect 90 degrees from the center of the circle? Or am I doing something else? I always thought tangent looked a little orange, because it sounds like tangerine, which happens to be orange. When the geometry teacher taught me about tangents, I always pictured the circle as being an orange tangerine. Somehow, I always left geometry class hungry.
Which brings me back to southern food. Gravy. What idiot came up with this shit? Was it some maniac that had just replaced his metallic truck bed with a wooden one? Earth to red neck. Wood rots. Specially when it rains.
I bet it was someone like my grandma, who had finished cooking breakfast and didn't feel like putting the grease into a giant container for the next time she cooked, and decided to be lazy, and put some flour in it, maybe a little salt and pepper, and maybe a little more grease, and a couple of lumps, and then suddenly put it on the plate and BEHOLD! “What is this brownish gray stuff, Ma?”
“Gra-- Grrrr-- Ground-- No-- Gravy! Yeah, that's gravy right there, now go ahead and eat it, it's good for ya.”
And that's all she had to say to get us to eat that crap. And somehow it caught on. Women everywhere, after a long tiring day of cooking, took their left over grease, and unlike their fore-mothers, they decided not to save it, instead turning it into the fastest artery clogging meal on the entire face of the planet. Biscuits and Gravy. Behold. The feminist movement. Southern style.