A Dated Post 9/11 Tale

Fahrenheit 9/11 enraged me like no movie I've seen before.
Exactly how it enraged me is not something I'm going to share with you. Whether I'm left or right-handed doesn't matter today.
What does matter is one day after seeing the most talked about movie since "Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson Take Manhattan," I was stirred to go on a fact-finding mission of my own to Washington, D.C.
The political junkie deep within my soul, which for too long had been buried under my affection for old-school rap and corn dogs, was awake again.
When was the last time a documentary about politics and war by a pudgy, hat-wearing leftist was the top grossing movie of the week? When a documentary of any sort can draw more Americans to theaters than a Wayans brothers comedy about black men dressing up like white women and a movie about dodgeball called "Dodgeball," it's obvious change is in the air.
We were on the verge of something big here in America and I needed to be in the center of it all. Plus, I had always wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial.
With an extra day off from work thanks to our founding fathers and this paper's publisher, the wife and I packed up our cameras and a bag of puffed cheese curls for a three-day weekend in D.C.
Like any good fact-finding mission, we first had to start at a Long John Silver's. I had the chicken. The wife had the Oxymoron Special, also known as the Jumbo Shrimp Combo.
Co-habitating side-by-side with this Long John Silver's near Gaffney was an A&W root beer restaurant. How these two seemingly different restaurants were able to work out their differences to form one unified eatery with an interstate view is an example for all of us and a sign to me that our country is still on the right track.
Not only was there plenty of malt vinegar on every table, but they had frosty mugs, people, and root beer on tap! These are the types of things that make our country great and I have to wonder why Michael Moore left out this out of his little film. Propaganda, I think.
Of course the trip didn't stop at Long John Silver's. We marched on to D.C. where our friends Monty and Robyn -- a pair of real-life Washington insiders -- had agreed to provide us with free lodging in their Arlington safehouse.
Monty is a project manager, or PM as they say in the business, for the all-powerful National Potato Foundation. I'm not exactly sure what he does, but I believe it has something to do with ensuring all potatoes -- from the biggest of the big Idahos to the smallest of the small red creamers -- have equal protection under the Bill of Rights regardless of the color of their skin.
Robyn is a Big-Time Washington Lawyer in the most Dick Cheney-ist way of speaking. She's really smart and fun, and is practically royalty in my book as the daughter of a man who threw two no-hitters with the Cubs. Robyn is so sweet and nice you almost forget she's a lawyer, at least until it's 4 a.m. and one of your friends needs some legal advice in the middle of your bachelor party.
Over the next three days, Monty and Robyn would serve as our guides to the seedy underbelly of the nation's capital.
Under the searing heat and mucky humidity, we saw all of the big monuments to all of the big wars and had a few fruit smoothies when things got too hot.
I walked the same streets as Woodward and Bernstein. I saw JFK's eternal flame. A man bought a Pepsi in front of me at a street corner snack stand, then turned around and asked me if I would buy him a hot dog. I said no.
We saw all the monuments to the former presidents which were etched with the eloquent things they said.
I wondered if one day they'll make a monument to our current president, and if they do, how are they going to find a quote worthy of being carved into marble.
The Fourth of July was our last day in D.C. Clouds moved in and it literally rained on the parade. Thousands of people had lined to streets and nearly everyone had a flag or some other patriotic paraphernalia.
As the rain continued to pour down on the melancholy masses, it was sad for me to see so many drenched flags and people pouting. I thought, what has happened to our American spirit? Where's are can-do attitude?
But then I saw it, right there by the subway stop. A line of dry men and women selling $2 umbrellas for $10 each.
I love my country.

Grills, Grills, Grills

A decade after wrapping up puberty and eight months into marriage, I finally became a man last week. I bought a grill.
Now don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of grill experience. I've had a few in my day, but I had never gotten a hold of a real full-bodied beauty like the Weber queen I picked out last week.
It sounds kind of sad and sick, but all of my previous grills were either community grills anybody could use and abuse for their own pleasure or hand-me-downs from my parents.
When I was in college, they gave me this petite little thing that required me to spend a lot of time on my knees to fan the flames. I didn't pay enough attention to her and she rusted out before we could establish a lasting relationship.
For years I missed the heat and smell of outdoor cooking, but my bachelor lifestyle never allowed me to settle down long enough to find a replacement.
Then I found the perfect girl and married her. It wasn't long after that I learned it doesn't matter how great your marriage is, it doesn't hurt to have a grill on the outside.
The wife and I actually went together to go pick her out. The story gets a little less sexy from here. For some reason when I was young and fantasized about having a grill, I would imagine going to some testosterone dream factory where there were a bunch pretty ones just lined up waiting to go home with you.
I found mine at Target, but I'm OK with that because this luscious 22.5 inch hottie looks and feels just like the grills of my dreams -- but came at a bargain price.
She looks so good that it's almost a shame to keep her in the backyard, but Carolina -- that wife I talked about earlier -- won't allow her in the house.
While I'm obviously proud of my new trophy grill, I have to admit our brief time together hasn't been without its difficulties.
Just like a good woman, a grill can be a complicated thing. There are so many different levers and heating techniques and I haven't quite gotten the hang of the whole thing yet.
The owner's manual/cookbook that came with her said if it's 70 degrees outside with little wind and fair to partly cloudy skies, it should take about four minutes to cook each side of the burger. It took me 35 minutes to get my patties to stop mooing.
At the 40 minute mark I couldn't take it anymore. I was hungry. Apparently, I pulled the burgers off prematurely because Carolina's weren't done. She said I needed more heat.
I was dejected. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
But my understanding wife, my girl who always knows the right thing to say, cheered me up.
"This was only your first time," she said. "We have years to keep practicing."
I can't wait.

Our Linda

I'm feeling really grown up right now.
First there was the wedding. I have a wife and I'm a husband and that's great. I promise not to write about this any more -- except maybe in the next paragraph.
You get some really nice adult gifts when you get married.
Not "adult" in that highway billboard "open 24 hours/truckers welcome" type way, but "adult" in the shimmery kitchen counter appliances/crystal bowl type way.
If there's anybody out there contemplating a marriage proposal my advice would be to go for it. Especially if you need a new coffee pot.
Anyway, more than just the wedding and the accompanying George Foreman Grill with built-in bun warmer, what has made me feel most grown up is our recent purchase of a new home.
How can you take on 30 years worth of debt and not feel grown up? With all that money involved, buying a house was way more stressful than getting married.
I knew I wanted to love, honor and cherish Carolina for the rest of my life, but I wasn't so sure I could say the same about a little house in Mauldin or Simpsonville.
You see? I'm so nervous about taking on this new adult experience that I'm not even sure where I live. My street address says Simpsonville, but Mauldin City picks up the trash. At least that's what they told us. After two weeks in the house the mailbox is empty and the trash can is full.
We bought one of those nice, quaint little new homes that one of those big-money, mega-real estate developers are plotting around the outskirts of Greenville. It's a great first house with a fenced piece of orange dirt in back. I have no complaints.
Because we liked the house so much, we rushed back from our honeymoon so we could attend the much-dreaded "closing."
Everyone I talked to told me to fear the closing. "Are you ready to close?" they would ask. It was as if we were conjoined twins being prepped for our separation surgery.
Truth be told, it really wasn't that bad. Becky, the nice lady who deemed our personalities and credit histories worthy of a home loan, came with us to this very professional old law firm in downtown Greenville to help us through the process.
There we met the lawyer who would handle our closing, we'll call him S. Courtney Hootie Monroe Richman, III.
He was exactly the type of guy on which Hollywood built its stereotype of an old Southern lawyer. He was well-groomed, well-mannered and probably extremely well-off.
S. Courtney Hootie Monroe Richman, III had one hoot'na of an accent, too. At one point, I thought the deal was going to fall through because he called Becky the wrong name.
Becky seemed to be old friends with Mr. S.C.H.M.R. III, so I was a little embarrassed myself when he said, "Now it is indeed a ray-yah occasion to have our Linda here with us."
"Oh no! He just called Becky 'Linda.' The deal's over. We're through," I thought.
Carolina was stone-faced. It took me a minute to realize he meant "Lender" in his own Southern way.
So, I was a little intimidated after that. But as we prepared to sign our life away, Mr. S.C.H.M.R., III put us at ease as he carefully explained all of the papers we were about to sign.
At one point when tension in the room was mounting over a mistake on the final price of the home included on the contract, S. Courtney Hootie Monroe Richman, III cooled things down by telling us a story about his family's first trip to Disney World.
It seems Mr. Richman was a little groggy on his first morning in the Magic Kingdom. As he brushed his teeth heartily with an oddly oily and bland flavor of toothpaste in the dark bathroom of the Luxury Goofy Suite, he slowly realized he had instead squeezed a dollop of hemorrhoid cream onto his brush.
It was a great story to hear from the man overseeing the legality of the biggest purchase I'll ever make.

Sugar/Booger

The scene at my apartment Wednesday night was ridiculous.
Maybe you heard that an ice storm caused 1.2 million customers of the royal Duke Power company to be without juice last week. Apparently my place was one of the first to go as the weight of iced branches crashed down on utility lines all around my humble domicile just before dinner time.
Carolina, my quick-witted fiance had arrived earlier to light an array of $8 scented candles and although the place was still relatively dark, it smelled like a dream.
My first thought was, "Wow, cinnamon-vanilla-jade-country breeze-sunshine morning sure smells great," and then my second thought was, "What are we going to eat?"
Just a couple of days earlier I had stocked the freezer full of microwave dinners and red, white and blue popsicles, neither of which seemed appealing or possible at the moment.
So off we went to my neighborhood Applebee's. They had electricity and all-you-can eat riblets for $11.99. That kept us busy for about an hour.
With barbecue sauce crusted underneath our fingernails we headed back to the apartment with a mild sense of optimism about the power being restored. Our hopes grew as we saw televisions shining brightly from the condos across the street, but our faith was soon shattered when we pulled up to my light-less apartment building.
Carolina suggested we "turn on" the candles again and I corrected her by saying we should light them instead.
After cursing me out in her native Spanish, we turned on the candles.
Our loyal puppy Tony Pepito Fitzgerald began to whine so I let him out to share the darkness with us. It was starting to get a little chilly in the apartment so Carolina put Tony in his sweater vest. That dog loves to wear clothes so much that he began to sprint around the apartment, leaving a trail of little poo drops behind him.
With the scented candles working overtime and me cleaning up Tony's mess by flashlight, it was shaping up to be quite a night.
Now that the carpet was cleaned, Carolina and I didn't know what to do with ourselves. We felt like we needed to know what was going on in the outside world but had no way to access any news. I suggested we put some batteries in a radio and listen for a weather report, only to find out we didn't have any batteries or a radio that would run on them anyway.
"I guess we'll have to talk to each other," Carolina said without even trying to hide her disappointment.
It's really hard to make small-talk with someone you've spent every possible moment with for the last four years, but we gave it our best shot.
"Boy, it's nasty outside."
"Yep. It's really bad."
"Can you believe that Indiana-Maryland game?"
"We should eat those Rocket popsicles before they melt."
So with freezing rain outside we attempted to save our frozen treats by eating them. The first two were pretty good, but the third one was just cold.
With purplish-blue lips, Carolina said, "I wish we could have a hot drink now."
Realizing that I could be her hero forever if I could somehow manage to make a hot drink without power, I started my mission. I gathered four of the candles as my heat source, put a cup full of water in the tea kettle and rested the kettle on top of the candles' glass containers. It took seven seconds before the kettle had cut off all oxygen to the candles and they extinguished.
"Let's play Scrabble," I offered in consolation.
We did a People Magazine crossword puzzle instead and it took about nine minutes.
It was 8:30 p.m. but it felt like midnight. As the holder of a psychology degree, Carolina loves to play "free-association" with me to undercover my secret neurosis, but what she finds instead is my knack for rhyming.
She started with "Ice."
"Nice," I said quickly.
"Sugar," she responded.
"Booger."
"Let's do something else."
It went on like that for a while, a long while...