Dear Travis,

So I have been hearing recently about this exercise where you actually sit down and write a letter to your younger self and you give him or her advice about the life that you are going to face.  I initially thought this was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard because my younger self had already lived my life so who was I really giving advice to and why would my younger self even want to take advice from me when my life was nothing but one big hot mess?  Then I thought about it a little more and figured out that everyone, including me and my former self, could benefit from my advice so why not....

Dear Travis,

I am writing this to you on the cusp of my 41st birthday.  I have no idea how old you are right now in the time/space continuum in which you live but I hope that, at whatever age you are when you read this, it gives you some insight into what your life will be like.

First, you have AMAZING parents.  Wherever you are right now you probably don't believe me.  You think your mother is to loud and that your father always agrees with her but they love you like no one else does and they are the most supportive people in the world.  Eventually you will see them age and realize how lucky you are that you have had them in your life for as long as you have.  Their only fault is that they will do TOO good of a job raising you and when you do go out on your own you will realize that clothes don't wash themselves, condiments don't grow in the pantry, and even though it falls freely from the sky, your water will be turned off if you refuse to pay the bill.

Thanks to your late summer birthday you will be younger then everyone in all your classes and your maturity level wont really even out with your classmates until high school.  This will be a struggle for you well into college when you will realize that your academic ability far exceeds your social skills.  You wont really come into your own til your mid twenties when your body and mind finally catch up with one another.

The filter between your mind and mouth will fail you on numerous occasions and you your words will hurt those closest to you.  While you wont realize it when it happens this will teach you, as an adult, the power of an honest apology.  You will learn that the pain from words last s far longer then the sting of slap.

You will eventually appreciate your younger brother.  Yes, he is annoying now, and yes you think everyone likes him more then you do, but he ends up being a great guy that marries the perfect girl and has a handsome son.  You'll talk every week and look forward to holiday visits after he moves away from Mobile.

You'll meet great friends who enjoy weekly dinners.  You'll take amazing trips far out of Alabama and you'll get to do things that right now you've only read about.  You aren't moving to New York, even though right now you know it is totally in your future and you can go ahead and take the Oscar acceptance speech that you have folded i your wallet out and store it someplace safe.  I'm not saying you'll never use it, but the place you have reserved for the statue in your curio is still empty.

You have accepted that you will be single for the rest of your life and that you wont have any children, but the month after you turn 26 that will all change and the older you get the more Easter eggs you will dye, the more uniforms you will buy and the more stockings you will see on your mantle at Christmas.

You will go through hard times.  You'll face down enemies and endure the betrayal of false friends.  You will think that this kind of thing is only happening to you but you will grow to realize that it happens to everyone.

Eventually you will read about this exercise and you'll think it is crazy.  You'll look at your own life with a pen and paper in front of you trying to detail all of the things that you would change if you could go back and do it over again and you'll be surprised when, after serious contemplation, that paper is blank.

You wouldn't go back and relive it, but you also wouldn't change it.  All of the good, bad and ugly is what led you to this place in your life, which apparently is right where you want to be.

So, wherever you are, enjoy these next years.  Trust me, it's one hell of a ride.

Love,

You

Honey Boo Boo Child

Something settled over Mobile yesterday.  Something worse then the floods, the locusts, acid rain or even polyester.

I'm talking about "Toddlers and Tiaras"

I was minding my own business yesterday when suddenly I got a migraine so bad, blinding even, that I knew exactly what Obi Won Kinobi was speaking of when he said there was a disturbance in the Force.  After some research I had found the the team of "Toddlers and Tiaras" was in Mobile.

Now if you aren't familiar with this show, and I really can't how you wouldn't be, let me briefly explain it to you.  Mothers pimp their daughters out for trophies, crowns, and cash.  That is the plain and simple of it.  Imagine, if you will, the Kartrashians as infants.

Now, I know that all parents think their infant, toddler, and even pre-teen and teenage child is gorgeous.  Even with greasy hair, braces, and ill fitting hand me downs.  It takes a special parent though to weave fake bangs in their kids hair, give them a spray tan insert artificial bridges in their teeth and send them waltzing down a runway for the hope of being " Little Miss Insert Witty Category Title Here".  It seems to me that would be a childhood like none other.  They flash mega-watt fake smiles, toss their over colored hair, wave with hands that have fake nails, in hopes of being crowned.  Because that is exactly what happens in everyday life.  Hell, that isn't even how it is in Snow White.


I will admit, I have watched "Toddlers and Tiaras", only because about a month ago, one of them went viral when she called the world Honey Boo Boo Child and that a dollar made her "hollar"  I thought to myself, who would do that to their daughter?  When they showed her extreme couponing Jabba the Hutt stand in mother I understood.  This "woman" began explaining the pageant circuit and what it was teaching her daughter...then, on national television, she burped.  Thank God pageants are teaching her something because this bad permed horror story certainly wasn't.

 I thought I had seen enough of this to last me a lifetime until self described beauty queen Alaina began speaking of her special juice that was going to help her win and that she could feel it "kickin' in"  Now we all know the only thing that someone uses the phrase kicking in to describe are drugs of some kind and when I saw this beast turn up a bottle of Mountain Dew that had been mixed with Red Bull I almost called the department of Human Services myself.  At this point though she was so annoying I was praying that someone would give her a package of pop-rocks on the thought that her insides would literally explode right in front of our very eyes because the only thing she had learned was how to be a money hungry, fame seeking, caffeine guzzling bitch...maybe she is a Kartrashian after all.

I understand that kids need hobbies.  I get that.  Hobby-less kids end up sitting in dark room building bombs while their unsuspecting parents never once look in on them.  I also get that while there are "stage parents" in every sport or activity that a child will be involved in.  We have all seen dads coaching from sidelines and mothers simulating a cheer routine in the hopes that their kids would get to experience the thrill of victory instead of the agony of defeat.  That's okay.  What isn't okay is clipping in fake hair, applying makeup with a trowel, and giving botox to a child that hardly knows their ABC's...

Unless of course your name is Kris and your children are Kourtney, Kim and Khloe...

Georgia on My Mind

There are things in our lives that shape us into being the person that we are today.  I have been fortunate that I have gotten to travel the world.  I have seen how others live and I have a strong understanding of just how lucky I am.  However there is one thing that has shaped me more then just about anything else.  It's with me everywhere I go and I can always turn to it whenever I need answers from on high.

I am talking about "Designing Women".

Set in the South this show about the Sugarbaker sisters and their business associates looks, from the outside, like a bit of mindless drivel.  However, upon deeper inspection this bit of television genius can give us a peek into the people that, I think, we all should be.  Okay, so it isn't as deep as Schindler's List, I'll give you that, but here are some examples on how a show, known to be situation comedy actually handled things that we all have been through in our lives.  Now I know that life aint perfect and that, in times of peril we all shouldn't flock to the fictional Sugarbaker sisters for our answers (That what "That Facts of Life" is for) but who among us hasn't been in one of these situations.

I remember being young and loving Designing Women and, at the same time, being terribly overweight.  One evening I saw the title "They Shoot Fat Women, Don't They?" and I thought to myself, certainly my favorite show isn't going to skewer the overweight.  Well, I was shocked as it did just the opposite.  Gorgeous and shallow Suzanne found herself on the receiving end of the ridicule that she had dosed out all of her life.  When she was just going to pack it all in and "get thin and then get even" she met a child whose entire family had been killed by starvation.  This led her to give a speech that I dare anyone to tell me is right up there with Gettysburg Address about her weight gain and how it had affected her shedding a different light on the fat joke.

Reminding us that we are all guilty of secrets that we don't want others to know and that we shouldn't pass judgement was one of Julia's specialties.  In an episode where a long time client passes judgement on a friend dying of AIDS Julia straightens her back, pulls her shoulders tight, holds her head up high and exclaims, as she is forcibly escorting this narrow minded bitch out of her business that "If God were handing out sexually transmitted diseases as a punishment for sinning, YOU'D be at the free clinic all the time!"  Hysterical?  Yes!  Applause worthy?  Of course.  Insightful?  You better believe it.  Who among us hasn't aired someone's dirty laundry knowing that we had loads of it right in our own washrooms that could make the world think differently about us if it ever got out.

And who couldn't watch this show and not laugh out loud at the sibling rivalry between the ever proper Julia and the many times married Suzanne.  Having a younger brother that is the polar opposite of me made this television show hit even closer to home then most did.  I remember thinking, about Chris, that there was no way we were related.  He with his outgoing personality and devil may care attitude was a stark contrast to my pulled a little to tight, kiss my ass mentality and it drove me crazy....that is until I realized what really happened the night the lights went out in Georgia.  After hearing a beauty pageant queen make fun of her sister for something that Julia herself has made fun of all of her life, she, well she pretty much goes crazy and reminds this woman of just how important her sister is to her.  I mean lets face it, do we really think that twelve thousand people lept to their feet for sixteen and one half minutes of uniterupted thunderous ovation as flames illuminated Suzannes tear stained face.  Hell no we don't.  People, Suzanne isn't real, and there as no fire baton!  However, this episode, one of the benchmarks of television history if you ask me shows what every single sibling is guilty of.  I can trash talk my brother all I want because he is mine.  You, on the other hand....

Now in all honesty do I want to sit Sutton down in front of eight years of Designing Women and have him learn his values from that.  Hell no.  The Sugarbaker house is actually in Arkansas, Charleene is really from New York, and the last two years of the show sucked.  They own a design firm but never work and every vacation they take (from the mountains to the beach to Graceland) is an experiment in terror.  They never agree on anything and find themselves in the most outrageous situations that they somehow manage to neatly wrap up in 23 minutes which is nothing like real life at all.

They are however a perfect example of how life's little lessons are everywhere.  These four women tackled everything from racism to sexism.  Heart attacks to menopause.  American History to sex education.  Marriage, divorce, death and domestic violence. And they did it all when television was meant to be an escape from our world, not a peek into it.

I rarely watch television anymore.  I would like to say it is because I don't believe in mindlessly wasting my time looking at a device mounted to my wall, but the truth of the matter is I don't have time to waste.  When I do watch it I see that scripted reality shows and perfectly planned spontaneous fights have taken over.

So I will happily watch Designing Women re-runs over the Real Housewives of Atlanta any day.  I learn so much more from them anyway.

Under Pressure....

There is something in my life that is progressively causing me more and more pressure in my life.  It isn't unexpected bills, my job or my personal life.

I am talking about migraines.

I started getting migraines after my 37th birthday.  There were these horrible headaches that caused me to take a pause in my life and I couldn't explain them.  So I went to WebMD, which should be illegal mind you because of all the self diagnosing you can do to yourself on it.  That very day I had diagnosed myself with sickle cell anemia, dutch elm disease and a brain tumor.  But not just any brain tumor.  My head aches were so bad that I knew that my brain was completely encapsulated and that there would be risky surgeries involved.  Someone would post it on facebook, it would get noticed by Matt Lauer and my plight would become a national news story.  Susan Lucci would play my mother in the Lifetime Made for TV Movie and I would write a book afterwards (provided I wasn't called to Glory) and then make the talk show junket spouting off the ways that my life had changed for the better.  Hell, I probably would even become vegan.

I went to the neurologist who did one round of blood work and popped out with this migraine diagnosis.

Migraines?!?  Are you freaking kidding me. I thought to myself as I stared at this doctor across the exam room.  I didn't know who this yahoo was but at that moment I was sure he was full of sh*t.  I scanned the room quickly looking for a degree that was written in dull crayon but couldn't find one, anywhere.
Now, I am one of those people who trusts doctors.  Three of my dearest friends are doctors, good ones, and when they tell me something I believe them, but there was something about this one that really made me want to knock his smug look into the middle of next week.  Knowing that was not a good idea, I decided to ask a few questions.

"I don't understand how I have migraines," I said.  "I've never had a migraine before."
"Obviously you have," he answered.  Now, if you know me well you know that he might as well have told me to F-off because directing sarcasm AT me does not leave one in my good graces. However, I figured I needed the knowledge he had so I continued.
"What causes them?" I asked.
 "I have no way of telling you what causes them.  They are triggered by different things in different people."
At that moment, as the pressure started to build and the pain crept around my left eye I realized that blatant arrogance was one of the triggers of mine.  When he told me that I would have to have one triggered to find out what triggered it I decided it was time to leave.  First, I had never heard the word "trigger" used so much and second, I thought it was in mine, and Mobile Infirmary Securities best interest if I just evacuated as quickly as I could.

Now, I am lucky in the regard that mine are not bad, but when I do get one I need a cold, dark, completely silent room.  Don't ask how I am, if I need anything, or even tell me that the house is on fire and I need to leave because there is a good chance you are going to be hit by the first thing I can grab and throw at you.  Consider yourself warned.

I have found my "triggers" are pretty common.  Strong perfume or cologne, some kinds of shampoo and laundry detergent can trigger mine.  A fluorescent light bulb that is about to go out can trigger one and the smell of the ENTIRE Kirklands store in Bel Air Mall can pretty much hospitalize me.

Oh, and talking to stupid people doesn't help them either.

So, I happily avoid all of the above.  After all, life is far to short to be spent in a dark, cold, silent room....