Two Things
(but one is really long)
May the Cinco de Madre
This past week felt littered with commercial reminders that I just don’t fit in. “May the Fourth” is good fun for everyone, but I’ve never felt a strong enough attraction to the Star Wars franchise to get too excited about it. (Is that weird?)
As a kid, the nearest movie theater was in the next town, across the drawbridge and the high-rise bridge. I lived two miles outside the first town (well, third, if we’re talking history of the state), so I was a good six miles from the movies. Six miles on a bike doesn’t sound that far as an adult in a city with sidewalks and bike lanes, but six miles in a rural area where at least two of them would be on the side of a busy two-lane highway with a speed limit of 55? That sounds like a better test of the US Healthcare system than a good means of travel for a kid.
My parents were not fans of movies. Or, at least, my father wasn’t. At any rate, we went to the cinema exactly once as a family and that was when we stayed at the motel near the theater because we’d come back from a theme park trip to find the roofers hadn’t covered the tar paper well enough and a summer rain storm had run down all the walls along the front of the house. We saw E.T. We rarely rented movies once that became an option at the video store in town. The VCR was in the den where my father liked to sit and watch old WWII documentaries so we didn’t watch much TV either.
Which is to say, the first time I saw any of the Star Wars movies, I was in college. I’m still not sure I’ve seen any from one end to the other without interruption with the exception of the thing with Jar Jar Binks.
I’m not trying to play down anyone’s fun, I just don’t have the Funko Pops to prove my allegiance.
I feel like Cinco de Mayo has lost some luster what with so many people realizing other cultures don’t exist just for them to get drunk. (Not that other countries haven’t used “American Parties” as excuses to get drunk wearing jeans, camo, and decorating with red Solo cups.) Or maybe I’m just too old to still get emails from night clubs with illustration of dogs in sombreros that say Corona Lite. (Definitely that one.)
My very good friend’s birthday is on the second of May, but she used to regularly celebrate it on Cinco de Mayo because that’s when there were good drink specials and workplaces tended to ignore hungover 20-somethings on May 6th.
When I was younger, long before the internet connected most of the world and before reading books in translation from every corner of the globe was as easy as clicking the download button, I was so confused by the idea of other cultures “just” eating their own food. My experience of “Mexican food” wasn’t even a local restaurant as a kid, but boxed “taco dinner” kits at the grocery store. The area I grew up in didn’t get a decent Mexican restaurant until I was about to graduate high school. It moved into the old teen club where we used to sit soda around a “bar” while listening to Kris Kross.
The Chinese buffet that took over the old McDonald’s when I was in high school had the most ornate exterior I’d ever seen. Looking back, it served a wide variety of Americanized food that was fairly bland and gelatinous, heavily fried because that’s what the area liked, and was overall a slightly-fresher version of Panda Express. On the one hand, no wonder I couldn’t fathom someone eating that every day without ever getting bored. On the other, I grew up with people who ate fried shrimp and fried fish and fried chicken with fried okra and “salads” made of macaroni or potato that were largely just globs of mayonnaise. Looking back, I can’t imagine how anyone lived on that.
I don’t mean that in a snobby way. Not intentionally. I was never all that interested in food as a kid. I liked pizza, sure, but overall food was a thing you were supposed to eat because your parents made you rather than a thing you did because you enjoyed it. Simplistically, I could say this is because I grew up in a town without garlic, but I will say a good Bogue Island summer tomato is delicious.
Foodies are another kind of obsessive and I lack proper obsessions.
“Obsession is the world's new obsession. With characters, TV shows, musicians; if you can think of it, there's someone in some corner of the internet whose life revolves around it…”
I also lack a mother now, which makes Mother’s Day feel like another culturally-imposed holiday I don’t know what to do with. Should I buy the urn diamonds? Am I supposed to make the ducks buy me a card for cleaning out their coops and pond? Am I supposed to feel empty because my cats don’t scream at me and slam doors like the teenagers on the street?
Paddleboarding
We spend Mother’s Day morning out on Whiskey Creek paddleboarding.
Fun fact: Two hours of paddleboard rentals cost more than concert tickets to see Halsey.
Still, it was great to explore the mangroves near Whiskey Creek. We saw a lot of the same animals we saw the week before, but this time from the water. I was fascinated by the mangrove tree crabs again.
We also saw puffer fish, an American Redstart (bird that looks like a tiny oriole), and a loggerhead sea turtle. The turtle swam up next to my paddleboard. I did not get pictures, but I was so excited, after it swam away, I literally jumped up and down on the paddleboard. (I do not always know how to act my age.)
