Hillbilly Kissin' Lessons

My oldest son started daycare when he was two. I did not
worry about his safety there at all. The lady only took ten
children, and all were age five or under. The yard was fenced.
The daycare itself was a little cottage behind the caregiver's
home.

When I came to pick him up each day, my son screamed and
ran away. "I don't want to go!" OK, so it broke my heart, but
he really liked daycare. I was embarrassed that he ran away
from me every day, but the caregiver said that a lot of kids do
that.

One afternoon, my boy ran to me and held out his arms to be
picked up. When I lifted him up, he put his hands on my cheeks
and said, "I kiss you." Oh, how sweet. I hugged him and turned
my cheek for the kiss, and he said, "On the lips." His little hands
turned my face back to his. I puckered up my lips for the kiss.
And then he stuck his tongue in my mouth!

I was shocked! I pulled my face away from his.

"What are you doing?"
"Kissing you."
"You do not put your tongue in someone's mouth!"
"Yes you do."
"No, it's not right."
"That's how you kiss."
"Who told you that?"
"Tori's brother. He showed me how."
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

OK, so I didn't actually scream, but I wanted to. Kids will
be kids. Tori's brother was four, so it's not like it was a
crime or anything. But it took a lot of persuading to convince
my boy that all people do not kiss by jamming their tongues
into each others mouths.

I guess I'm just glad it wasn't some hillbilly relative that
taught him.

My redneck toilet, aka The Outhouse. Eureka! I fixed this pic myself. I don't know how. I couldn't do it again for a hundred million dollars, but my boy will be proud of me.
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Here's my redneck toilet, aka The Outhouse. Just turn your head. I need my son to help me fix this picture, as I am not good with these newfangled computer thingamajigs. We don't use this outhouse now, but we did before we built our house. The wind blew it over, which is why the door fell off. That's a piece of black sewer pipe coiled up beside it. We are not hooking it up. It's just that my husband's work buddy was taking a walk on his break and saw this sewer pipe behind a subdivision with a sign that said "free." So he told my husband, who just had to have it. You never know when you might need some sewer pipe, and what better place to store it than right next to your outhouse. Here is a little outhouse humor. A man sees a boy poking a stick down through the seat of an outhouse. "Son, what are you doing?" "I dropped my coat in there, mister." "You don't want that coat now, son. It will be all nasty." "Oh, I don't want the coat, mister. I want that sandwich that I had in the pocket."
Posted by Hello

Redneck Jr.

All right, today is equal time for my 2nd son. He is definitely
one of us rednecks. He is in first grade now, but he really can't
be bothered with this education business.

Kindergarten was not a good year for him. He did not like
going to school. The only thing that could get him there was
reminding him that his little girlfriend would miss him. He told
me they were getting married when they were 19, "because
then we will be very old." He missed a lot of recesses that
year "sitting on the log." That is where they go for misbehaving.
Hmmm...where to start. Of course there was all that talking
with his girlfriend. And the exposing himself part that we try
to keep quiet. Then there were the two kids he punched in the
stomach. The boy cut in front of him in the drinking fountain line.
(And you know, it could just run out of water). The girl wiped
off the table, (Hey, it was his turn to wipe the table). Let's not
forget the pea-stomping incident in the cafeteria. But you know,
it was another kid's idea.

The highlight of the year was probably getting sent to the
principal's office. In kindergarten. It was hard to get the
actual story, but his teacher filled me in. It seems there was
a substitute teacher for PE. My boy ran around and around
the gym, and would not listen or sit down. When his teacher
came to get the class, the sub told on him. His teacher told
him he should apologize, but he wouldn't. She said she would
leave him there until he was ready. An hour went by. Still no
apology. His teacher then told him that if he didn't apologize,
he would have to go to the principal's office. Fine with him.
From this point, I had to question him directly:

"What happened in the principal's office?"
"Assistant principal."
"OK, what happened in the assistant principal's office?"
"Nothing."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing."
"You mean to tell me you both just sat and looked at each other?"
"No. I was standing up."

About 30 minutes later I concluded that the assistant principal
walked him back to the gym, and he apologized.

Oh, and let's not forget the Christmas Program. We dressed
him up in corduroy pants, a sweater, and his "churchy" shoes.
He was on the front row. A big mistake on his music teacher's
part, though she might have done it to keep her eye on him.
He said he had to sit out for acting up during rehearsal. He
was fine as long as he was actually singing. He didn't step out
in front of the group and face the crowd and wave his arms to
mock-direct the singers (like the boy next to him did). It was
the down time during the little play and the solo that did him in.
Yes, my boy had come undone. Oh, he sat on the front row
of risers like he was supposed to. He smiled devilishly and
waved at me every 2 minutes. Still OK. Then he pulled up
his pant legs so it looked like he was wearing a brown corduroy
bikini bottom. He stretched his arms up over his head, leaned
back, and karate-chopped the boy behind him until one of the
teacher/bouncers came over to break it up. They stood up to
sing, so the bikini reverted back to pants. He untied a little
girl's belt, pulled it off, and handed it to her like a gift. The
piece de resistance was when he put his face in her stomach.
He said he was sniffing the flower on her dress.

Tales from his 1st-grade year will have to wait for another post.

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

If I had not given birth to him without anesthesia, I would think
my first son was adopted. He does not exhibit the same
redneck hillbillyness as the rest of the family.

In kindergarten, he cried the morning of school picture day
until I let him wear dress pants, white shirt, tie, and vest.
(Why not just pin a "beat me up every day for the next 12
years" sign on his back?) At Christmas time, his teacher
asked the kids what they wanted Santa to bring them. My
child said, "A fax machine." It's not like he was operating a
business or anything--he didn't start begging for that until he
was 8. The kindergarten class hatched baby chicks. They
were right by my son's seat. To any other child, this would
have been a treat. Not my boy. "I can hardly get a thing
done, " he complained. "All day long it's cheep! Cheep!
Cheep!"

When I dropped him off one morning for 1st grade, he got
out of the car with a rolled-up Gateway Computer catalog in
the back pocket of his jeans.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"I'm going to tell the duty teacher that you want me to stay in,
and I'm going to sit in the hall and read my magazine."
Uh, no. I think he was reading at 7th grade level at that time.

In 2nd grade, he hooked up his teacher's new computer.
They had been having trouble for a couple months with the
computer in the gifted classroom. He asked the teacher if
he could take a look at it, and fixed it within 5 minutes.
"Mom, I remembered the problem started when they
connected it to internet, so I just did a system restore to
the day before that date."

By 3rd grade he was asking to start his own business as a
computer consultant. "Of course, Mom, you'll have to drive
me to people's houses." He went through my school buildings
asking if the teachers needed their computers set up at the
start of the school year. He did mine and 4 others. At home,
he hooked up 6 speakers and 3 printers to his computer.
Because he could. When it was time for the Missouri school
assessment test, he couldn't sleep the night before. It was
like Christmas Eve. The next morning he woke up and said,
"I can't believe it. The day I have waited so long for is finally
here: MAP testing!"

Now in 4th grade, he's been having trouble with his home
computer. It crashed, so he wiped the hard drive and
re-installed Windows XP Professional instead of XP Home.
He also installed a new sound card. He wants a second
computer so he can run Linux. He really wants to run Linux
and Windows with a partition and choose which system
to use when he boots. I think that's what he said. It makes
no sense to me. I thought Linux was Lennox. It's like telling
a dog how to fly a plane. He says I am not "computer friendly."

About the only redneck thing this boy young 'un likes to do
is ride the 4-wheeler. He won't go without a shirt in the
summer. He doesn't like fried chicken. "Hey, who put the
bone in my chicken?" he demanded when biting into his first
chicken leg. My husband taught him to drive the $300 car.
Just around the yard, because he is only 10.

We have not been able to fit him into our hillbilly mode yet,
but we love him just the same.

Overheard While Teaching in Redneckland

Here are a few of the things I wish I'd never heard during my
17 years of teaching in rural Missouri:

"Hey, wanna see my stub toe? I cut if off with a lawnmower."

"Please don't tell my dad I stabbed Christina with a pencil.
I'm supposed to get my shotgun this weekend, and he won't
give it to me if he finds out."

"The teacher that was here before you got fired because they
got pictures of her sleeping with Black men."

Superintendent at job interview: "We have 29 churches in
this town, and as a young single woman it would not look
good for you to hang out at the corner bar. And don't give
homework on Wednesday nights, because everyone goes
to church."

"Come with me, we are going to check the kindergartners
for head lice today."

"Yeah, but she has a little baby. Her husband must get really
drunk."

From 7th grade girls, talking about another 7th grade girl:
"She doesn't know anything. She's probably still a virgin."

"We don't use soap. We wash our hands with deer grease."

9th grade student sitting down at her desk with a soda and
bag of chips: "You mean we can't eat and drink in here?"

"And when the mailbox wouldn't fall over, Shawn s*#! and
wiped his a*# with his underwear and stuffed it in the mailbox."

"DFS took the kids because he left them in the house with the
pit bulls. He was only next door talking to the neighbor. So
now they are going to bury the drugs in the backyard so when
DFS checks the house they can get the kids back."

Principal to the only male teacher on our middle school faculty:
"Well, Mike, it looks like you're going to be in hog heaven this
year." Mike, taking a long look around the room, "You got
that right."

"He grabbed the stapler off the desk and started stapling down
his spine. Then they were wrestling on the floor and, Ma'am, he
bit him in the private area."

"We went down in the woods and built a fire. Then we put a
metal folding chair over it to see who could pull down their
pants and sit on it the longest."

From a 12th grade boy: "Then my sister turned up pregnant.
She don't want it, so I said, "Let me have it. I'll raise it up right."

"There's some kind of fire in the furnace room. I want all of
you with an upstairs classroom to go back in and open your
windows to let the smoke out."

I'm sure city teachers have their own "too much information"
list. I'll make a Part 2 list as I remember more.

Camping With a City Girl

Can rednecks peacefully co-exist with city slickers? Sure, if
we can train them in our redneck ways. Some are more
trainable than others. Remember my friend "Betty," from my
post Watch Your Mouth? She was a city girl who took a job
out in Redneckland.

We had a travelling teachers' party every Saturday. We
played Trivial Pursuit, or poker, or barbecued, or floated,
or played golf. It didn't matter who hosted, we always found
something to do. Two of our married teachers, who shall be
known here as "Frank" and "Fran," had some land outside of
town where they raised cattle. They decided we would have
a campout in tents.

Betty had not been camping, but she had a good time wherever
she was. We all went out on Saturday afternoon and started
a barbecue. Betty climbed up on the John Deere tractor and
pretended to drive. She had on a big straw hat like the Hawaiian
Punch guy, and sang "Green Acres is the place to be, farm livin'
is the life for me. Land spreadin' out so far and wide....." Fran
took her picture, and later it appeared, framed, in Betty's
house.

Betty was amazed by the creek. Actually, the creek was dry
at the area where we camped. It was just bedrock that had
been worn smooth over about a million years.

"Hey, Frank!" Betty hollered. "How much did it cost you to
pour this creek?"

"What do you mean?" asked Frank.

"You know, the concrete for this whole creek."

"Uh...Betty, that's rock. Erosion from water and little rocks
did it. It's not concrete." Frank was one of the high school
science teachers.

"Oh. When are you going to breed these cows?"

"Betty, those are steers, not cows."

"OK, so when are you going to breed them?"

"Betty, you can't breed steers."

"How come?"

"Because they've been castrated."

"Oh. Where are we all going to sleep?"

There were a bunch of different size tents set up already. Betty
and I were supposed to share a little bubble-looking tent. It
was barely big enough for the two of us. Even worse, it was
not on level ground. We put our borrowed sleeping bags in,
and Betty said, "I'll take this side." The high side. I did not like
that idea. At that time, Betty was bigger than I was. Not taller,
but rounder. "Great," I told her. "If you roll over in your sleep,
you won't be able to stop. You'll either smother me, or our
tent will go rolling down the hill to the concrete creek." Betty
laughed and agreed to switch sides with me.

It was not a restfull night. "Zip up the door of that tent," Betty
ordered. "A bear might get in here."

"Betty, if there's a bear brave enough to come up here in all
this noise, I don't think a zippered cloth door is going to stop
him."

"You're so funny," said Betty. "Let's spy on Bob." She crawled
to the door flap and peeped out. "Look, he's poking the fire.
Now he's sitting on that log. I wonder what he's thinking."

"I can hear you, you b#}%*s," said Bob. He was not amused.

Betty started to laugh. Loudly.

"Shut up, Betty!" yelled the male half of the couple in the tent
next door. They were two of Betty's closest friends.

Betty laughed harder, then said, "Shhhh. Listen. I think they're
making out."

"Don't make me come over there!"

Betty shut up and went back to spying on Bob. Now she
tried to whisper. "Look, he's going to pass out in the fire.
His head is bobbing. No...get back! He's coming over here.
No...he's getting in his truck. You've gotta see this. His feet
are hanging way out. He's too tall to sleep in his truck."

"Shut up!!!!!!!"

The next day, Bob declared, "You can lead Betty to a concrete
creek, but you can't shut her up."

I Won't Tell if You Won't Tell

Before I married my husband, he worked in St. Louis in a
factory. He was in charge of maintenance, which meant
everything from repairing machines to pouring acid down
toilets. He tried to help out a local guy and get him a job
there. Let's call this guy "Ray."

Ray didn't have a car, so he walked about two miles to
our town every morning along the railroad tracks. Then
my future husband drove him to the city, about 70 miles.
This was in his light blue 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass with
the headliner that sagged down on top of his head as
he drove.

On the way home one day, Hubby noticed that Ray
was unusually quiet. He sat kind of bent over with his
jacket in his lap. It was raining during the drive through
rush-hour traffic. The car in front of them hit the brakes,
and so did Hubby--but a little too late. He ran into the
back of a car. Ray was thrown forward. Hubby got
out to exchange information with the other driver, and
they agreed to drive to a police station that the driver
knew was just off the next exit.

As Hubby came back to his car, he noticed Ray bent
over picking at something on the floor. He looked
closer, and it was screws and nuts and bolts. Ray
was putting them back in his jacket pockets. They
looked at each other, but didn't say anything.

Hubby was afraid Ray might say he was hurt in the accident,
to get an insurance settlement. Ray never mentioned the
accident, and Hubby never told on him for stealing from
work. I guess country boys have to stick together in the
city.

Many rednecks long for such an opportunity. My high
school students have told me that their parents advise
them to say they hurt their back if they are in an accident.
That's because it's hard to prove that your back isn't hurt.

Oh, and the blue Olds Cutlass got a new used right fender
--maroon. Because rednecks don't always have cars
with all the parts in matching colors. When you go shopping
at the auto salvage yard, you have to take what they have
in stock.