Valentine Belles

A QUICK NOTE TO MY BELOVED:  Don't panic.  You do a fantastic job.

Valentine’s Day.  I don’t disagree with the dead horse argument that the day was invented by greeting card companies, candy makers, florists and jewelers as just another way to cash in à la Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, Boss’s Day, Secretaries’ Day and one I only recently learned about:  Grandparents’ Day.  Stop the fliberty-gibbeting insanity!  

As a personal rule, I don’t see much point in celebrating a day that the North Carolina Court System doesn’t deem important enough to close in homage of.  If I get the day off, I will most happily and heartily celebrate whatever the reason is.  Shallow, I know, but my waters only run deep in parts.

I have to admit that I am more unsettled than average when it comes to the notion of Valentine’s Day.  The traditional practice of honoring someone you love and making them feel special should at least ring dim in the memories of Southern Belles out there.  Why?  Because it’s what we deserve Every.  Single.  Day.

We are not ornaments—although we are stunning.  We aren’t taken down from the shelf and dusted off for use when someone needs us to smile pretty and cook like Paula Deen.  Some of us can’t cook and none of us smile if we don’t feel like it.  For your own safety, trust me and don’t try out this hypothesis.   

We have opinions and—gasp—they may not match your opinions and that’s okay.  Why?  Because we are well bred enough to respect your point of view and we damned well demand the same in return.  We also have enough gray matter in between our ears to know that we aren’t going to change your opinions any more than you can change ours, so politely agree to disagree and move the hell on.  Stop poking the stick at the snake.

We are not invisible.  If you don’t believe me, ask the Charlotte Neiman Marcus for the January 14^th security footage of the woman running around in the shoe section like she’d found her own personal Mecca.  After that, do me a favor and burn it.

We love our families with a fierceness you don’t want to test.  We will get out the acrylic “fighting nails” at the first sign of trouble and may God save your soul if you are in the way.  We shoot first and there’s rarely enough left to ask questions of later.  We can only hope that we are loved as fiercely in return.     

We are human and we occasionally make mistakes.  That’s all that needs to be said on the subject.

Now, we certainly don’t expect flowers, candy, jewelry or a barber shop quartet (please God, no) every day.  That would be absurd and, believe it or not, tiresome.  Well...maybe not the jewelry part...but never mind.  We would simply like to hear that we are loved, honored and appreciated on days that aren’t February 14^th because we're Southern Belles and we deserve it.

In case you were wondering, we love and appreciate you, too.  xoxo

Giggle Belles

Manners, manners, manners.  Decorum, decorum, decorum.  I do so hate to keep harping upon those subjects, but the aforementioned two little words are so very vital in all areas of Southern life that they simply keep coming up.  Dignity and respect are another couple of philosophies that little Southern boys and belles learn as soon as they can comprehend.  A person should attack every situation with manners so they can at least look back at the end of the day and say they tried.

Alas, even Southern Belles are imperfect humans and, unfortunately, occasions do arise where a person is caught completely off guard and they aren’t always able to respond with appropriate behavior.  Super unfortunately, those situations tend to occur in instances where keeping decorum is vital.

Please allow my brother and me to be your cautionary tale...

Ethan and I have a very similar sense of humor—sorry, I know it was taxing when you thought that you only had to deal with one bat shit crazy person.  Through the years, we’ve often found that we were thinking the exact same thing and whatever we are thinking is usually pretty wicked.  It is important for you to understand that even now—in our ripe old age—we are no longer allowed to sit next to each other at occasions like weddings, church services and funerals. 

Why?  Well—even in our ripe old age—we get the giggles.  Yes, the giggles.

Let’s take the wedding first, shall we?  It was perfectly normal and lovely wedding.  The service was held in the evening, so it was a rather formal affair.  Of course, the church was packed as tight as a can of sardines.  The bride looked gorgeous and serene and the groom looked nauseas, but happy.  There were fifty bazillion bridesmaids and groomsmen.  Last but not least, there was a string quartet as well as an organist.   

I am going to go ahead and tell on myself:  I don’t like organ music.  It always puts me in mind of the Phantom of the Opera and funerals.  To me, it sounds entirely too maudlin at celebratory occasions (try to un-bunch your shorts here if you disagree—I said to me).  In this particular instance, the organist seemed to be having some sort of ego conflict with the string quartet and they were doing their damndest to out-play each other.

The organist was flat going to town.  I fully expected to see the Phantom of the Opera swoop in or Quasimodo to descend in from the bell tower.  It was positively unsettling.  The woman was pounding the keys with such ferocity that I was jolted every time she hit a note.  Ethan said under his breath, “Oh God, it sounds like she’s dragging a dying cat over the keys.”

Well, that did it.  I felt the giggles rumbling inside my tummy and coming up for air.  Ethan and I were both shaking in a desperate attempt to keep the laughter in.  The elbow jabs and death stares of our parents only made the pressure cooker of laughter even tighter.

Ethan and I narrowly escaped the wedding with our lives 

Funerals are the worst.  Please understand that Ethan and I certainly aren’t trying to be disrespectful.  On many occasions, we are either related to the deceased or very close to the family.  In situations like that, I think that we...we’re just really sad and really tired and our guard is lower than average.

So...there we were at a funeral for someone quite close to us and—yet again—the church was packed to the rafters.  Right before the service started, a couple sat down in the pew in front of us and...well...there’s really no way to put this delicately.  When we deal with the situation with my daughters, they are supposed to say “Excuse me, I tooted” although I do wish Baby Belle 1 would quit saying that in public.

I don’t know if it was the strain of sitting down that caused the “wind to break” or what, but there was no mistaking what had just happened.  Incomprehensibly, no one else reacted, but Ethan and I...oh, it was bad.

We were in physical pain from holding the insane laughter inside.  We were in a particularly dire position because we were slap dab in the middle of the church, so there was no escape route.  The desperate thought briefly occurred to me that we could pretend to be overcome with grief and run out with our hands over our faces, but it was quickly dismissed.  Somehow we made it through the service without completely disgracing ourselves.  Our parents were ready to plant us in the cemetery right next to the dearly departed.  Holding the laughter in made my ribs terribly sore for days.

Of course, we don’t need the decorous celebration of a wedding or the solemn occasion of a funeral to completely lose it.  We’re more than capable of being obnoxious in plain ‘ol church.

Our church was celebrating some sort of Episcopal international thingamajig (as you can probably tell, the effort was lost on me).  During the church service, members of the congregation who were fluent in other languages were to stand up and read liturgy in their special language—not that the majority of us would have a clue as to what was being said.  We had readers in Spanish, French and German.  The German speaking reader stood up and started his gig.  There was an elderly couple sitting in front of us who had even less of a clue than we did.  After a few verses of Deutsche, the gentleman leaned toward his wife and—in that non-whispering whisper that is a specialty to those who are hard of hearing—said, “Good Lord!  What has this place come to?  They’re speaking in tongues!”

Well, at least Ethan and I were able to escape from the pew and out of the church that time.

West Coast Belles Represent! (Isn't that what the kids are saying these days?)

I vividly recall my first trip to Los Angeles.  I was around ten or eleven years old and my parents took us down the California coast during summer vacation.  We started in San Francisco and took the train down to Monterey and Carmel, LA and we finished up in San Diego.  Being the little television and movie addicts that we were, my brother and I were greatly looking forward to our time in Los Angeles—we had stars in our eyes, if you will.

So the train rolled into the station in LA and we hopped right off ready for action.  As I am sure you can imagine, the Los Angeles train depot wasn’t exactly a country club.  To be perfectly honest, it was one of those places where one feels they need vaccinations to enter.  However, as far as my brother and I were concerned the Coast Starlight train from Monterey and Carmel was very pretty for the first half hour, but one can only see so many craggy ocean-side cliffs and sea lions before one grows quite bored.  We were ready to run around like wild hoodlums for a while.

The taxi drive to our hotel was...bracing.  I’ve heard the horror stories about the LA freeways and I’ve even had occasion to drive them once or twice and they weren’t the best time I ever had, but our cab driver seemed to be intent on scaring the bejeezus out of us.  I’m not 100% certain that the fella spoke English and he seemed as though he would have been more comfortable on the life and death streets of Rome instead of a place where travel lanes were actually demarcated.  Poor Dad had the misfortune of being stuck in the front seat and the only other noise from the racing engine was him stomping the imaginary passenger brakes we’ve all been guilty of using once in a while. 

As I am sure you can imagine, my parents’ nerves were shredded by the time we arrived at the Beverly Hills Sands—or whatever it was called.  There were several functions going on at our hotel, including some sort of party with a red carpet walk.  Ethan and I hopped out of the car and who was the first person we saw?  Little Richard!!!

Yes, I know, Little Richard is a bit of a downer when it comes to celebrity sightings, but we were young and fresh off of the turnip truck.  We excitedly grabbed onto Dad’s arm to show him our amazing discovery, but it was a bit windy and we caused the $20 bill Dad was paying Dale Earnhardt the cab driver to go floating off into the wind never to be seen again.  Now, take a moment to think about the fact that a $20 in those days was equivalent to probably around $50 today.

Suffice it to say that our father was not amused.  I can’t even look at a picture of Little Richard to this very day.  You can furthermore infer that the rest of our time in Los Angeles did not improve (and I’m not even mentioning the after party for the porno film across the hall from our room).

Flash forward about twenty years or so:  I flew out to visit my brother who was living in LA at the time.  My recollections about the town were intertwined with the no-so-happy memories of my only other visit.  I started to have misgivings on the plane ride out there.  I am not a good flier and about three hours on a plane is the most I can manage.  I kept looking down and seeing desert and our pilot kept coming on the speaker saying that it would “be another hour or so.”  I swear to you that I was seconds before asking for a parachute and walking the rest of the way.

The fight through LAX and the rental car place was a bitch and I was quite the bitch myself by the time we got to the hotel.  Right before I started fussing about something else, I realized that I was channeling my father and I needed to step back, take a look at the situation and attack it from the perspective of a Southern Belle.

I hate like the devil to be trite, but I am Olympic shopper and, if I calmed down and thought about it for a moment, I was in my own personal Mecca.  Melrose was a blast and Fred Segal was a complete trip, but the moment I stepped one toe onto Rodeo Drive, a chorus of angels sang.  Apparently, a little Southern grace goes a long way at Versace, Vuitton, Weitzman and Chanel—everyone was so darned friendly!

Before you get all excited, there was no “Pretty Woman” stroll.  I didn’t end up like Julia Roberts with fifty bags hanging off of my arms and a theme song playing as I walked triumphantly down the street.  Also, in complete contrast to the Julia Roberts experience, all of the sales people were just as friendly and chatty as they could be.  It was mind-blowing, but Rodeo was like a little slice of the South in sunny California. 

 Oh okay, fine...I bought one little purse and maybe one or two pairs of shoes.

Trips to Los Angeles as a Southern Belle are much more fun--even when the credit card company calls your husband and alerts him to "suspicious activity on the account."

Hurricanes for the Newly Initiated

We all have our scaredy cat moments.  You know what freaks me out?  Tornadoes.  They pop up out of nowhere so you are completely unprepared and their path is about as random as a pig tied to a string.  I'm always amazed when I watch tornado coverage and they show one house with a couple of shingles missing sitting in between two houses that have been reduced to toothpicks.  How do you fight that?  You can't!

We don't get many tornadoes down this way, but I've had a designated shelter room in every house we've lived in.

Earthquakes are yet another natural event that give me the heebie jeebies.  You don't even get to have a designated shelter room when one of those hits.  Where exactly does one go for safety when the entire ground is moving?  Furthermore, I can't really get on board with the notion of aftershocks. 

My fear of earthquakes is perfectly valid because Wilmington is on a fault line.  The same fault line that rang Charleston's chimes in 1886 runs slap dash through our fair Port City.  I vividly recall sitting at my parents' house in Forest Hills and feeling slight tremors rock just enough to remind you that they were there and they were waiting.  You know what is built literally on top of the Charleston/Wilmington fault line?  The nuclear power plant.  Who in the name of sweet baby Jesus thought that would be a good idea?  Dumber than a box of hair.

So, yes, Mother Nature has plenty of weapons at her disposal to give me the willies, but nothing quite releases the dread in my heart as does a hurricane barreling through the Atlantic.  Tornadoes and earthquakes are scary, but they are still rather far off the path of likelihood.  To the contrary, hurricanes are a very real threat.  When a hurricane is coming...you just know.

I've lost count of how many hurricanes I've been in.  I'm pretty sure that my first hurricane was Diana in 1984.  There's no need to be gauche and ask how old I was, but suffice it to say that I was in elementary school.  When you're that age, you can't have any kind of a concept as to what a hurricane really does.  It's just a reason to stay out of school and what can be so bad about that?  Even when we lost power, my brother and I had a fine time bumping around in the dark with flashlights and candles. 

Diana was unique in that the eye passed over Wilmington once and then the bitch hit the brakes and backed up over us so we got to have all the fun again.  Do you know what that meant?  More school cancellation days!  WOOHOO!  Frankly, I was at a loss to understand what my parents were complaining about. 

I married me a Raleigh boy in 1995 and talked him into settling down at the beach.  Right around the time of our first anniversary, there were some rumblings going on about a hurricane that had the audacity to look threatening right at the start of hurricane season.  Any self-respecting hurricane would have at least waited until September.  Nonetheless, it looked like Hurricane Bertha was headed for a visit.

My husband really hadn't had any sort of dealings with hurricanes as evidenced by his breathless anticipation of the arrival of Bertha.  Basically, his level of excitement mirrored mine from Diana.  He skipped off to the store and bought all of the things they tell you to buy, did what he was supposed to do and then sat down with our dog and waited (if he'd had a tail, it would have been wagging). 

So...Bertha hit and the two trees that we had in our yard fell as Scott watched from the widow and declared it "SO COOL!"  The power was out, but bright and early the next morning, my husband was up and ready to clean.  Apparently no one had filled him in on the big Power Loss = No Air Conditioning problem.  He called our landlord and was amazed to find him still abed at 7:00 AM and somewhat less than on the ball about getting the trees cleared out of our yard five minutes ago.

So, as starts many a redneck story, "he had a friend who owned a chainsaw."  Said friend showed up and the big ass pine tree out front was sliced into nice little bite sized pieces.  The problem was that there was nowhere to go and cool off after such a long hot day of work.  My beloved was a heat stroke waiting to happen.  We camped out at the law firm that night because it was on the same power grid as the Police Department and it had power.

Then bigger, badder Fran hit a few weeks after and took care of culling many half-hearted residents as evidenced by the for sale signs that sprung up shortly thereafter.  After that, there were a couple of little piddly hurricanes and then Floyd showed up to flood them all off the map.  I remember the season that I was pregnant with Baby Belle 1 because we were struck by a storm bearing her name.  (Omen much?)

Yep, hurricanes tend to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Sherman burned Atlanta and it grew back.  Hurricane Hazel nearly drowned Wilmington in the '50's, but it grew back, too.  This is a wonderful place to live, but you have to have the cajones to stick it out.  Not a problem for the Diamond Magnolias.  Bring it on.

Hair Squirrels

I have it, my husband has it and my Baby Belles have it. 

Curly hair.

As I have previously discussed, curly hair and Southern humidity are not friends.  I know that the Belle dress code includes not having a hair out of place, but I can’t live up to that one and I’ve long since come to peace with my decision. 

April 29, 1995:  The day I quit giving a crap about the squirrel’s nest on top of my head.  I was a senior at Carolina and sharing a little matchbox apartment with three other girls.  I was scheduled to graduate in May and I was getting married on July 15, 1995.  I guess you could say that I was heavily booked. 

I was getting all primped up to go somewhere, so I took a shower, blow dried my hair and turned on the curling iron to finish straightening out my frizzy locks.  You need to understand that 1995 was soundly within the Dark Ages of hair products.  These days (if I still gave a crap), I could go and purchase any number of lotions, potions, unctions and gadgets to wage a respectable war against humidity, but—back in the day—I had a blow dryer, a powerful amount of hair spray, a curling iron and a prayer at my disposal.

The curling iron had spokes or prongs or whatever you call them.  Its purpose was to comb through my hair kind of like a straightening iron, not to curl anything.  My hair was about halfway down my back and I needed it long for my wedding veil—although I did intend to get it cut shortly thereafter. 

So, there I was combing the iron through my hair like I had done countless times before.  I don’t know if I was distracted, in too much of a hurry or simply had my planets out of alignment, but the curling iron somehow became tangled up and it got stuck in my hair.  Of course, the iron got stuck right near my scalp rather than toward the ends. 

Let me assure you that the curling iron got molten lava hot as evidenced by all of the burn marks on my ears and neck at the time, so there wasn’t a moment to lose once I realized what was going on.  I unplugged it and immediately bent over into the bathroom sink to run cold water on it and cringing when I heard the sizzling noises.  I ran downstairs to solicit assistance from my roomies.  They couldn’t get it out, so their conversation turned grimly toward employing scissors.

Prospective brides are total basket cases and the veil was the most special part of my outfit because it came from my grandmother.  I held my roommates at bay while feverishly thinking up some sort of alternative.  There was a salon a half mile or so up the street from us—I’d walked by it daily on the way to class.  Chaz’s Hair Salon:  My only hope.

I grabbed my purse and, with the curling iron hanging lamely off of my head, I burned a path to the salon.  Of course, I didn’t realize that I’d left the cord hanging out of the car door while I drove, but I’m sure the sight added to the insanity of the scene.  I charged in through the door of the business rather like a rhinoceros and all conversation stopped as everyone’s eyes turned toward the crazy woman standing panting in the waiting room. 

A man—who I later learned was Chaz himself—left the woman sitting in his styling chair to walk over and get a good look at the horror that was my head.  He grabbed my shaking hands reassuringly and said, “Pumpkin, what on earth did you do to your hair?”

The whole sordid tale poured out of my mouth as the tears poured down my cheeks.  I was getting married!  I had to have hair!  This couldn’t be happening!

Chaz gently moved the other lady out of his chair, poured me a glass of wine from his private stash and set to work.  The whole salon—stylists and customers alike—stood around me in the chair either petting me and making shushing noises or offering suggestions as to how to fix the unholy mess. 

After a lot of work and a lot of prayer, my knight in shiny hair products somehow managed to dismantle the curling iron and get my hair free.  Everyone in the salon applauded and I sunk in the chair in relief.  Miraculously, there wasn’t any lasting damage—other than the curling iron and I didn’t give a crap about that.  I begged and pleaded with Chaz to let me pay him and he resolutely refused money.  Like any good Southern Belle, I sent him a thank-you note.

Baby Belle 1 likes for me to straighten her hair and, if I have time, I’ll do it.  I’m careful to let her know that her curly hair is beautiful and I warn her away from heated gadgets.  I’m happy to be her cautionary tale.

Baby Belle 2 has these fantastic ringlets that would put Shirley Temple to shame, but she poses a different problem:  She’s a hair twirler.  Yes, when Baby Belle 2 gets tired, those little fingers creep up to her hair and set to spinning.  She has put knots in her hair that would stump sailors and Boy Scouts alike.  She makes her own little dreadlocks. 

Yep, curly hair is not for the faint of heart.  It’s a good thing Diamond Magnolias aren’t remotely faint hearted.

Recreational Pharmaceuticals, Boating and a Bus Load of Nuns

Every lawyer has a first.  It is usually looked forward to with a mixture of excitement and dread.  When it is over, you are glad to see the back of it, but you always wonder if you could have done something differently.  It is usually painful, but you do your best and learn to move on.

A first trial.

For those of you contemplating ruining your lives by going to law school and for those of you that have lost your damn minds and are about to graduate from law school, here’s a helpful little hint:  When the Senior Partner comes in and throws a case file on your desk with the trial of said case scheduled to start in half an hour, you might have a problem.  If the Senior Partner tells you that the case is an open and shut cake walk, you need to run away.  Far, far, far away.

Granted, Criminal District Court trials are spur of the moment things.  Frankly, there isn’t even that much to prepare for because it always follows a fairly strict formula.  The arresting officer and/or complaining witness testify for the State.  Depending on your client’s criminal record and their ability to speak in coherent sentences, you may or may not put your client on the stand.  That’s about it unless, by some crazy stroke of luck, you actually have a believable eye witness to testify for the Defense, but that happens with the rarity of finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Of course, when one is a young lawyer fresh out of law school, that shoot from the hip stuff doesn’t work.  A young lawyer thinks that they need weeks to prepare for what, in reality, should only take about ten minutes.

So, the case was a BWI.  No, that’s not a typo.  Boating While Impaired.  I would challenge you to go out into Banks Channel right now and find a boater who hasn’t had a drink, but my guy got unlucky.  No shock there.

The boat was brand spanking new (that may have even been its first voyage if I recall correctly) and it was seriously expensive—expensive like the sticker price could have easily covered a four-year college education.  It was purchased and owned by this couple who looked like every other early retirees to the Wilmington area:  Stylishly silver hair, deep brown tan, shorts, flip-flops and matching rugby shirts (barf).

So, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Patrol, my client was driving the boat while the power couple sat down and enjoyed the ride.  Due to either a complaint call or erratic movement, the Wildlife Officers pulled the boat and discovered that the driver was over the legal limit for alcohol consumption.  That would be a plausible story...if you never laid eyes on my client.

Bless his heart.  If he actually tried to clean up for court, I would have hated to see him on the day of his arrest.  I can at least say that all of his clothes matched—camouflage from head to toe.  He apparently only shaved every couple of weeks and he smelled like he had a five pack a day smoking habit.  The coup de grace was the amazing mullet he sported—it stuck out in spots like he was getting radio reception and it would have put Billy Ray Cyrus to shame in his glory days.

 

Unfortunately, my client had an impressive criminal record, but—in an interesting turn of events—the owner of the boat was prepared to testify that he was the one driving the boat, not my client.  Truth be told, the owner’s version of events made much more sense to me.  I wasn’t even sure how my client and the power couple knew each other, but if I’d just dropped a load of cash on a boat, I can assure you that my client wouldn’t drive it if he was the last person in hell.

By the way, the testimony of the boat owner was the reason the case was declared to be a “slam dunk.”

I did my best to look composed as I walked into court and sat at the defense table with my client.  The Assistant District Attorney put the Wildlife Officers on the stand where both of them stated that they witnessed my client driving the boat.  I did my darnedest to shake them, but they had been testifying for the prosecution a lot longer than I’d been a lawyer and they stuck to their story unwaveringly.

The State rested and it was time to patch the ship together as best I could.  I certainly wasn’t putting my client on the stand with his record, but I was still going to take a shot with the boat owner.  He took the stand, took the oath and swore up, down, left, right and center that my client wasn’t driving the boat. 

Yay!  Reasonable doubt!  Woohoo!

The ADA cross-examined the boat owner whereupon it was discovered that said owner had bit of a pot habit and my client was his dealer.

Boo.  Hiss.

We closed evidence and I stood up to make some sort of a closing argument.  I was thinking about going with the “Your Honor, look at him!  Would you let this man drive you expensive-assed boat?  Of course not!” defense, but I didn’t even get a word out before the judge motioned for me to sit back down and zip my lips.

This next part is shocking, so you need to make sure you’re sitting down and have your smelling salts within reach:  The judge found my client guilty with about a millisecond of deliberation.

As I picked up the remnants of my chewed up ass and prepared to scurry out of the courtroom, the judge called me and the ADA to the stand.  I was told that I was screwed when the wildlife officers testified and the rest of the show was mere entertainment.  I believe it was put to me like this:  “Once you have the arresting officer’s version, a bus load of nuns could testify to the contrary and you will still be screwed.”

Slam dunk.

Basketbelles

Let me tell you a story about the sorriest little basketball team you ever did see.

First, I feel like I need to tell you that I was quite the athlete in my youth.  At the risk of sounding immodest, I was a competitive swimmer and tennis player and I didn’t completely suck at golf.  In spite of a few spectacular falls here and there, I could also hold my own on the ski slopes. 

I stupidly thought that I could play any sport I wanted to when I joined the First Presbyterian Church Girls’ Basketball Team.  We joined with other thirteen and fourteen year olds who played in the church league at Noble Junior High School every Saturday morning and Wednesday night.

Over the years, I’ve pondered upon what our main problem was.  We were certainly short and skinny, but so were the majority of girls on the other teams.  Although all of us were raised in ACC households and knew basketball like the backs of our hands, we didn’t have a lick of experience when it came to actually playing basketball. 

The other members of the sorriest basketball team ever certainly weren’t slouches in the athletic department either—at least one of them went to college on a full sports scholarship.  The thing is that we were all proficient in tennis, swimming and even one or two of us had experience in track and field, but those sports—unlike basketball—were non-contact.

After long reflection, I think that the foremost reason for our suck-age was the fact that we were too damned prissy.

When it comes to basketball, a player is either all over the offense or charging through the defense.  Any opportunity to steal the ball away from the other side should be taken with zeal and the throwing of as many elbows as necessary. 

We were too polite.  Polite people don’t run into each other on purpose and rudely snatch things away!  Perish the thought!  The first time (of many) that one of our team got the ball taken from us, she looked shocked and heartbroken that someone would do such a thing.  Rather than jump in a pile to fight for possession, we stood at a safe distance and looked on while wringing our hands.

I remember one particular team we played against that sported some of the biggest junior high school students I have ever seen.  Maybe genetic engineering was involved or maybe they ate their Wheaties every morning, but any one of those girls could have knocked us into the next county with nothing more than the swipe of their arm.  During one of those dreaded games, I somehow had possession of the ball.  I saw an enormous opposing team member charging at me and I felt like I was a little bug in the shadow of a great sequoia.  My mama didn’t raise a dummy, so I just held the ball out to her so she could take it without hurting me.  It’s not my proudest moment, but I am a survivor and there you have it.

Of course, in addition to being little milquetoasts, we were abysmal shots on the rare occasion that we actually had possession of the ball.  I played basketball for two years and I scored maybe eight points, although I will have to brag a moment and tell you that I actually made a shot from half court only a second or two before the buzzer.  It was my one moment of glory.  I remember one time when one of our teammates was so surprised to find herself with the ball that she stood doggedly under the basket shooting the ball repeatedly.  The problem was that she was at the other team’s goal.  We were hollering at her to stop, but she kept right on plugging along.  No judgment here—there, but for the grace of God, went I.

I remember one incident when I somehow ended up at the bottom of a pile of girls fighting over the ball.  It was completely by accident—I must have fallen.  The referee pulled everyone out until he found me on the bottom, curled in a fetal position around the ball.  I made sure to stay away from the ball as much as possible after that.  Thankfully for all involved, I hung up the old b-ball jersey when I got to high school and stuck with what I knew. 

My how things have changed...

Baby Belle 1 attends St. Mary Catholic School and the upper school had girls’ and boys’ basketball games last night.  BB1 is fond of several of the upper school girls and she wanted to cheer them on, so I took her to the game. 

Good Lord have mercy!  I looked around a couple of times just to make sure that we hadn’t gone to a hockey game by accident.  The girls were snatching at that orange ball like it was Justin Bieber’s head.  They were rolling around and fighting more than they were standing up straight and shooting for the goal.  Somehow, the refs only called three fouls, but it could have just been because they were too scared to draw the ire of the Amazons.

I have seen prison riots that look like the choreographed Michael Jackson video “fights” compared to what I saw on the court yesterday.  It wouldn’t have surprised me if someone got shanked.  If you’re interested, St. Mary’s won by about fifteen points but, as far as I’m concerned, any young lady who came out at the end with all of her teeth intact was a winner.

Was I horrified, you ask?  No way1  I thought it was completely awesome!  This is a new day and age for the Southern Belle and she has adapted like the survivor she is.  Of course, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I shall henceforth give the St. Mary’s basketball ladies a wide berth at all school functions.  Like I said, my mama didn’t raise a dummy.