Sunday, January 25, 2009

Crushing Like a Schoolgirl

We finally took everyone's advice and went to church today. And, lo and behold, we actually met some potential friends. And boy do they have potential! They are around our age, college-educated, have no children but do have a dog—an energetic lab, who would be the perfect playmate for our Jojo. 

I feel like a schoolgirl with a crush. These people are perfect for us! 

The church wasn't so bad either. I'm not sure why they have their only service at 9 a.m. (one of the reasons it took us so long to finally decide to go), but the people were pleasant and not pushy. I did not, as I have on other occasions, worry that it was just a matter of time before they took me in the back room, vacuumed out my brains and emptied my wallet. Instead, I felt welcome.

I did find myself flipping wildly from the hymnal to the Book of Common Prayer and back again,  but overall, I felt good about the experience. Nobody looked at us twice when we didn't go up for communion, although technically, as baptizees of other denominations, we are welcome to the table. 

We also discovered that they are looking for choir members. 

I haven't sung in a choir since I was 18 but have thought about joining one many times in my adult life. I do love to sing, and most people would agree that it's better if I do so in a group. Ooh, but do choir members have to get to church early? Of course it probably would be a good thing to have just one more motivation to get up early on a Sunday and drive the 35 minutes. 

So much to consider. Puppy play dates and prayer circles. This definitely is a different life than the one we left, but having companions does make it seem so much more exciting.

I am enthralled with the idea of this new couple, whom I've already decided must become our very best friends in the whole world. OK, dial down the crazy a notch. I don't want to scare them away. 

But, I just didn't even imagine that we'd find another couple so much like us. 

Is it OK to call tomorrow? Or should we wait a few days? 

   


Thursday, January 15, 2009

It's Official: Friends Wanted

While the bloom is not quite off the rose in terms of me loving our new house, I have, nearly four weeks in, realized that I cannot survive unless I make friends. 

The friends I left behind in Chicago and those from my home town have assured me that I will have no trouble.  But there's a key difference between now and when I met them. Now, I work from home and I'm not in school. 

Nearly all of the friends I made in Chicago were people I met at work. And even when I left to work from home, they still invited me to happy hours, birthday parties and any other excuse to raise a glass. 

So far, we've only been out to dinner with one other couple--the Dr.'s boss and his wife. (Yeah work!). But surely I can't rely on them for all my socializing, although I did find them to be refreshingly irreverent academic types that I would love to get to know better. 

I suppose I'm not helping my cause by sitting at the computer. I've heard this advice repeated several times so far: "Get involved in the community." But, how exactly does one "get involved" in the community? I suppose I could volunteer for something. Join a church. Put an ad in the paper. How would it read? 

"MWF seeks S or M F for friendship, no really just friendship." 

I did go to the gym the other night. It's the facility the college students use. I didn't feel too out of shape to be there, which was nice. Most people were wearing T-shirts and sweatpants rather than the brightly colored spandex that graces many a tooshie in a city gym. I did feel a little old though. And everyone else seemed to know one another. 

I'm not a particularly shy person, but this is more difficult than I expected. Yesterday, the woman who helped us open our new bank accounts in town called, probably because she noticed I hadn't even bothered to activate my debit card yet, and I almost invited her out to lunch. In the end, I decided against it, lest I come across as creepy. 

My mom is coming to visit this weekend, and I'm so excited to see her. But it probably won't help in my quest to "get involved." However, she may be game for the square dance held at the barn across the road every Saturday. Then I'll find myself in a new dilemma: What does one wear to a square dance?



Saturday, January 10, 2009

Country Killed the Radio Star

Let me start by saying that I like some country music. I own CDs by Pasty Cline, Johnny Cash and even the Dixie Chicks. My first concert at age 5 was Alabama. But I like other types of music, too, and that's where the problem comes in when you're living in West Tennessee. It's not that it's impossible to find other types of music, but there's a strange phenomenon on any channel that's not playing country—the playlists are incomprehensible. 

When I've had my fill of country songs, or they've played too many selections from the overproduced, poppy newcomers, I turn the dial for an alternative. What happens more often than not is that once I've passed over at least four more country stations and a few religious channels, I'll land on a song I like. Last night I found Aaron Neville's "Tell it Like it Is" and stopped to listen. Next up: Devo's Whip It. I like Devo as much as anyone else who grew up in the 80s, but following the mellow crooning on Neville? OK, well, at least I could keep the dial in place. But the next song was some sort of doo-wap number. Doo-wap after Devo? And so the search started again. 

Rather than have stations or even time slots devoted to a particular musical genre, they just try and cram everything that's not country into one station. The rock stations aren't any better. There's a lot of Skynard and Led Zeppelin, but they mix it up with Nickelback and other whiny new "rock" that I can't stomach. 

Satellite radio here we come!

 

Thursday, January 8, 2009

And then "nothing" happened

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this sort of thing (given our current locale), but I thought this was a somewhat remarkable news story. It's not that nothing of import happened in West Tennessee that amazes me; it's that there's a news story that serves to remind locals that no incidents have occurred.

I want to advance a theory here (which is what I was educated to do--advance theories on things whether you want to read them or not). When I read this story it made me immediately think of an interaction I had at a furniture store last Saturday. I think this news story (that no incidents occurred) IS a story because "incidents" here is a sort of code for crime. While other locations like to tout their economic opportunities and cultural mystique, it seems like West Tennessee is very proud of its lack of reported crime. (I use "reported" here deliberately.)

Which brings me to the furniture store. My wife and I journeyed into the Slightly Larger Town (S.L.T.) nine miles down the state highway from our diminutive burg to see the sights, rub elbows with our betters, and check out the retail options for furnishing our largely empty home. The S.L.T. is not big enough to rate a Wal-Mart (...yet) and there are many locally owned shops and businesses still operating. One of the more impressive was a four-level / warehouse-style furniture store looming over the town square. After lunch, we decided to check it out because most other businesses were closed on Saturday afternoon (why?). Inside loud country music competed with the cheers and squeaks of the UT women's basketball game on the tube. A few people were browsing the rooms crowded with desks, dinette sets, and sectional couches while a cadre of locals were chatting with the white-haired owner.

Eventually, the owner--noting that we were strangers in the store--tracked us down and started explaining how great all the furniture was. I asked what I thought were a few discerning questions and then assured him that though we were in no financial position to buy anything today, we'd return at some point with our fists and pockets overflowing with greenbacks. He asked us, quite warmly, where we were from and just what we were doing in town. At first, he went through same routine about the culture shock and assured us of the milder weather. He then regaled us with a story about delivering furniture to Chicago and getting lost. This must have been a while ago because he looked too old and seemed too important (as owner) to stoop to delivering his own merchandise. The gist of this story was that after searching fruitlessly for some address to deliver a dining room table or couch or something, he called the customer and declared that if she were more than ten blocks away from his current location, he'd just leave the damn furniture there at the gas station and she could worry about getting it to her house. He ended the story happily; she was only three blocks away, and he delivered the stuff. I wasn't sure what point I was supposed to take away from this story: that we can only expect so much from delivery drivers? That Chicago is a big, confusing place (which he already knew we knew)?

Anyway, this story segued into a laundry list of the attributes of West TN. It seems like the people who want something from us--to rent their house, to take a particular job, to buy furniture in their store--continuously try to sell us on the idea of West Tennessee. Like the furniture store owner did, these boosters acknowledge reality. They say, "We don't have all the things Chicago has, sure. But we have ..." and the list continues. One of the more troubling things they often mention, which the owner did last weekend, is that there's almost no crime in this part of the state. We'd heard this before, but we'd also heard from an appliance delivery man that the S.L.T. was a depressing place because people routinely steal from each other. Anyway the owner said that if we ever forgot to lock our house or car here in West TN that we could be confident that all our stuff (including, possibly, this bitchin' dinette set) would still be there when we returned.

I said that where we lived in Chicago was quite safe (unless you were a parked car and I was wheeling around the neighborhood in a 24-foot diesel truck), and that many times I'd neglected to lock my car door and still found it (and all the worthless crap in it) still there when I went back out. My wife and I never felt threatened or unsure when we were out late at night (perhaps we should have, but we didn't). I found myself getting sort of defensive. I mean, did he assume that we were too stupid to know that (on average) it's safer here than there? He'd never lived in Chicago; what did he know? Why was he telling us this? We'd already moved.

So I was about get all sarcastic and ask him, "Are you the mayor or on the welcoming committee or what?"
I thought he would, embarrassed, realize that he'd been droning on unnecessarily and apologize for wasting our valuable time telling us things we already knew. But before I could smart off, he explained that he WAS the mayor of this itty-bitty town right beside ours and had been the mayor for over a decade. He WAS on the welcoming committee and it was really important to him that we appreciate where we had moved. I felt glad I'd kept my fat mouth shut and said, "Oh, we do appreciate it."

I could say lots of good things about West TN, but I wouldn't put the nominal crime rate among its top characteristics. I guess so many people assume that in Chicago we were besieged by muggers, gangsters, and sex predators on a daily basis because of the news media. We weren't, which makes me wonder about this "no incidents reported" story. If the reality of crime in Chicago is being distorted (to make it seem menacing), could it be that there is an active effort to suppress knowledge about the crimes that are occurring in order to maintain the
illusion that no significant crime occurs. Would law enforcement be reluctant to disclose the numbers of violent crimes to media? Would media be reluctant to disseminate these reports? Could the victims of crime themselves be so invested in the construction of a seemingly "safe" neighborhood that they self-censor?

Or, could this place truly be as safe as it seems?

Saturday, January 3, 2009

The Lone Jogger

Thanks to the warmer temperatures, I've been able (and more willing) to resume jogging. I had been jogging some in Chicago since about October, but the weather  forced me inside a lot. And I discovered that there's not much in the world worse or more boring than jogging on a treadmill.

So far my runs—if you can call them that; I've never been known for speed—have involved disturbing all the area dogs and even frightening some cows. I have yet to see anyone else pounding the pavement. I'm sure there must be some other runners, but I feel quite conspicuous in my aqua hoodie and iPod tromping past the well-spaced houses and crop fields. 

Although we live on a highway, Church Street, so named because of the churches lined up there in neat row, runs alongside our house and then parallels the highway. I follow Church Street down to a single sidewalk and then back to a series of 20 mph roads, where I've only encountered three trucks total. 

Maybe I'll try to find a running partner. However, I have come to relish the peacefulness of my outings. The sun, the rolling hills, pines and livestock. As I fill my lungs with the clean air and my quads constrict rhythmically, I wonder how our lives are going to change.  

Perhaps I will feel less conspicuous over time. I will become, like the cows, a fixture of the countryside. 'Oh, there she is on her run again.' Now I imagine people think me strange. Maybe it's all in my head, and they don't give me a second thought. 

Still it's hard not to feel like an outsider here. Not that we haven't been welcomed. We have. It's just that I'm keenly aware of my own difference (real or perceived) in interests, in food and wine, and world view. I am a Yankee after all, although what that exactly means to me or to them, I'm not quite sure. 

Once school starts, I'm certain our social life will improve. But I imagine I still will feel a bit on display and in a sort of audition. I hope I don't get stage fright.