Good Lord! You wake up one day and realize that you are paying two hundred dollars to get your hair highlighted and that doesn’t even include the cut. You are having your eyebrows waxed and your daughter is trying to talk you into getting a Brazilian and you wonder, “What the hell is that?” I went to get a pedicure and was trying to tell the lady that I wanted my eyebrows waxed. “Wax, wax,” I repeated. She grabbed me by the hand and said, “You, follow me”. Like a dummy, I followed. She took me to a room in the back and pointed to a cot that had a sheet and pillow on it. “Eyebrow, eyebrow,” I said. “No tookie, no tookie,” I emphasized as I made pretense of making a big “X” on my crotch.Can you imagine?
And, what about this botox stuff? I haven't had it, but I 'm just saying....
Here I am, Lord, from hoeing cotton in the foothills of Alabama to a body makeover revolution. Why, my memma would have never had her hair colored and I never saw her toenails painted. Bless her heart. The only thing she ever used on her face was “Oil of Olay”. Yes sir, and she doesn’t have wrinkles at ninety-seven. Of course now, she always wore a bonnet when she was out in the sun. And, speaking of hair coloring, why, I remember my cousin and best friend Carol coloring my hair when we were in school back in Alabama. She put yellow food coloring in my hair to turn it blonde. If you want blonde hair, I would not recommend this; however, if you don’t mind a shade of green that rubs off on your hands when you run your fingers through your hair, then you might consider it. I never will forget going to school the next morning after we had spent half the night working on my hair. The lighting wasn’t real good in our house. I actually thought my hair looked pretty darned good. I don’t know what happened while I was standing at the bus stop waiting for the old yellow school bus to come. Maybe it was the air or the early morning sunlight that hit it. But, by the time I got to school, my hair was a very light sap green. And, it rubbed off on your fingers when you touched it. I heard more than once that day, “Yuk, ooh, what the heck did you do to your hair?” I have been thinking about the differences in my life, then and now. Living in Atlanta might be just stone’s throw from Alabama but it is a world apart from where I grew up. I have lived in Atlanta for twenty plus years and you might think that things in my little country town of Larkinsville, Alabama have changed with the times. Nope. People have pretty much stayed the same. Latham’s grocery store closed long ago and the feed mill and the cotton gin are gone. Nothing new has come in. People are still the same, though. My aunts are still growing vegetables in the garden and canning everything from here to Sunday. My Mamma still says that she is going “over yonder” to see somebody and she is always “fixing” to do something or another. I love it. Guess that old saying is true. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl. Lord knows, my husband has tried. I am still a country girl at heart. I love my pinto beans and cornbread. I will go along losing weight, then I go over to Alabama for a visit and woe is me. I stuff my face with fried corn, fried okra, pinto beans, cornbread, fried pies and whatever else they have cooked up. So, what am I doing here? I could be considered a storyteller. I used to get a good whipping for telling stories. I love to share stories about growing up in the South with my friends. Some can relate and some cannot. Two of my best buddies, India and Malik, whom I work with, are gluttons for punishment. They listen eagerly to my stories about growing up in Alabama. Malik suggested that I write these stories down and share them with others. Of course, this could just be a tactic to get me out of his face. So, let me take you around the bin a time or two. Hold onto your horses.
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