While you get to be an "Anti-Clarkie", I get to be re-introduced into my hometown of "L-Town". Okay...the only reason it's known as L-Town is because the Orlando people made the Podunkers - er - Lakelanders jealous that O-Town was a well known nickname (and a band???). So they created L-Town. Which is how I respectfully refer to it when talking to any of my "L-Towner" friends. Otherwise, I refer to it as the "sh**-hole", "Podunk", "Kaus Central" (Pronounced "Cows Central" after the famous wanna-be tiki bar everyone in L-Town frequents called "Kau Kau's"), or "there".
It's not that I don't like the city. It's okay. For a southern, semi-suburban area, its beautiful: grassy knolls, groves, parks, oak trees (which I adore b/c I loved them growing up) and million dollar + homes bordering alligator infested natural lakes that host international water skiing championships. There's space. There's clean air. My campus smells like a garden - there are roses and citrus trees blooming everywhere. It smells like Central Florida in its prime. Which it is: Central Florida in its prime.
But I can't stand the personality of the place. The "Southern hospitality". OMG... I HATE Southern Hospitality in L-Town. In Kentucky, it means a hug from a stranger who you can have a homey-conversation with. A dry porch when your car gets stuck in the rain. A cup of coffee and a bowl of grits when you're bluer than the grass. A concert for free cause you're an out-of-towner wanting to be cultured like they are. THAT is southern hospitality. In L-Town, it means that if your waitress at a sit down restaurant could be your mother or older, you have to eat your vegetables before desert. It means they physically drag you to church every Sunday. It means they'll go out of their way to convert you to their commercially reproduced, closed-minded, artificially sweetened conservative, city-hicker (not SLICKER, HICKER), Aunt Tilly's rocking chair, backwoods-wannabe-accent, REPUBLICAN way of life. And if you say "no, thank you," they're not allowed to cry, pout, scowl, or sulk. But it does mean they're allowed to shun you, talk behind your back, try harder, and add even more "Sweet and Lo" to cover their acidic criticism of your way of life.
So don't blame me if I come back and head straight for the first designer store and spend $300 on a pair of shoes (especially if they're Malano Blahniks). Because I'll be so sick of Wal-Mart that if I don't get does of actual, metropolitan couture, I'll become one of them. And I know we don't want that...
I'll just have to be the Mainstreamer Salmon in a Trout sorta world...
t h e . l u n c h . g r o u p
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