Send a Mouse to College

I have always been an animal lover. I was even a vegetarian for a few months when I was a teenager. I screwed up my diet when I ordered a veggie hoagie in downtown Cincy and halfway through, realized the sauce contained pepperoni. Who'd have thunk it? So, I'm a carnivore. It's a conscious decision and I do think about it from time to time when I'm enjoying a nice, bloody rare steak. Life is full of contradictions.

When I was a child in elementary school, my teacher passed out an envelope with an adorable little cartoon mouse on it. He was wearing a cap and gown and had a diploma in his hand. "Send a mouse to college!" the words read, large and colorful. Excitedly, I ran home after school, clutching the envelope between my small hands. I rushed in the door, chattering a mile a minute, and handed the envelope to my mother.
"Mama! I need a quarter! I'm going to send a mouse to college!", I gleefully proclaimed.Mom looked at me and her face fell. She picked up the envelope and scanned it.
"Come here, baby,"she said as she sat on the edge of the couch. Then she slowly explained vivisection to me and how my little imaginary mouse buddy wasn't going to go to school to learn, but rather was going to be chopped into bits and used as a learning tool for college students.
"No," I cried,"they wouldn't kill my mouse."

A little piece of my childhood innocence died that day. I became much more cynical of life and less trusting of adults. Even things done with the best intentions can be wrong, I realized. To this very day, I believe what the school system did was wrong. Getting children excited about helping out, convince them that they're doing something good, something for the greater cause, without telling them the consequences of that good act. Don't get me wrong, I don't much cotton to mice being in my house and I have used traps and poisons, but I'm an adult now. It's another conscious decision, like eating meat. A child doesn't have the experience to make that kind of decision. A child doesn't understand. You don't tap children for money to kill animals. Period.

Funny note to add. I told my hubby about "Send a Mouse to College" years later. He was shocked. His school did the same money drive for vivisection.
His response, "Oh my god, I sent about 6 mice to college!"

Bra Hoppers

I grew up in a small village about 25 miles north of Cincinnati. The area had a lot of Kentuckians settled there, as you could tell by the accents. My dad was 'from the head of a holler' as he often put it, so I grew up around that soft southern accent. As a teenager, I strived to eliminate the southernisms from my speech and I pretty much sounded like a Yankee when I moved to Tennessee 13 years ago.

The people in that area of Ohio looked down on the transplanted Kentuckians. There were large areas around there where the accents were thicker'n gravy and those areas tended to be more economically poor. They had their own culture and the stores and restaurants there catered to their tastes.

I heard a lot of derogatory names spewed forth in my lifetime about the transplanted Kentuckians, one of the more gentler and somewhat humorous was 'brier hopper'. With the southern Kentucky accent, it became 'bra hopper'. It was a term they used among themselves as well. My dad never did, but then Dad wouldn't have thought it a proper word, but you would often hear someone say, when asked where they were from "Oh, I'm just an ole Bra Hopper."

I hear that term when I was back in Ohio last week and it made me smile.

The Legend of One-Armed Billy

When Lola, the hyped up 'prospective tenant' mentioned her kin One-Armed Billy, I had a vague recollection of the man from my childhood. I'd like to be able to say he lost his arm in a battle or in some noble way, but if I recall the story right he got lost it while drunk one night hopping trains as a teenager. I had seen him around town when I was younger, always stoned, walking with a strange roiling gait like he was a sailor on a ship in high seas.

TM and I were carrying the ex-tenants broken up and trashed furniture out of the house when One-Armed Billy appeared.
He walked into the yard and I said, "Can I help you?"
He points behind me at TM, "He's the one I wanna talk to!". And he pointedly ignored me. He asked TM if he can have some of the furniture, saying he 'scraps' for a living. Glad to be rid of the stuff, TM told him to take what he wants. He offered to mow the grass for a beer, which we didn't have and then said he'll be back.

When he returned a few days later, TM was gone and One Armed-Billy seemed sober. He wouldn't meet my eyes and spoke haltedly. I realized what I had taken for rudeness was in fact not. It was painfully obvious he had a problem speaking to women, at least when he was sober.

A couple more days past and he returned again. This time to offer to haul off the trash left over from the gutting and redoing of the house. He had brought "Grizzly" with him this time, so named not for his bearish and very hairy body, but because he had raised a small bear cub to adulthood and kept it as a pet. The tiny cub grew to a 6 plus foot 350 pound bear, or so the story goes. I also got treated to a story where Billy taught Grizzly to swim by tossing a 6-foot alligator (brought back from Florida by someone he knew) into the local pond. They were both quite drunk and I got high just from the fumes radiating out from the two. Billy had been drinking beer and Grizzly smelled of whisky, though I did not get close enough to identify the type.

Being drunk, they were both very friendly. Way too friendly. I was uncomfortable when the direction the conversation started to take when One-Armed Billy confided that the men had 3 arms and 3 legs between them (I didn't ask if the bear was the reason for Grizzly's missing leg, though it did cross my mind), and then recited their supposed combined manhood inches to me. I told them I'd just ignore that little remark and asked them what they wanted to haul the small truckload of garbage for me. $150. Dear God, I realized they thought me an easy mark. I told them $100 would have been too much, but that I'd pass it onto my hubby. Grizzly said he'd do it for $100 and 'anything else you might have to offer'. I didn't ask what he meant by that, but told him I'd pass his offer on to my hubby.

I saw a lot of colorful characters during my trip. I have yet to decide if my encounters with some of them amused or scared me.

Probably a little of both.

Prospective Tenants?

An aggravating aspect of trying to ready a rental house in a small town is that word gets out that you are there and people come by at all hours wanting to 'be first' to get a chance at being the new tenant. It doesn't matter that you're up on a ladder with paint dripping down your ears, it's always a good time to pop on in for a minute and view a trashed house, walk through the wood and nails in the floor, and ask for a tour, even after being told the place isn't going to be ready for a few weeks.

One of the more interesting characters I met last week I'll call 'Lola'. Lola caught me wet with paint and in the middle of doing a wall. She walked right into the open door and into the living room. Hearing someone enter the house, I hauled ass through the house to meet her head on. She looked familiar.

"Hi, can I help you?' I asked, once hand still cradling the paint roller.
"Yeah, I heard this place is for rent and wanted to look around. Hey, where do I know you from?" she asked.
"I dunno, but you look familiar, too"
"What's your name?"
Maiden name given.
"Ohhhh! You're Aunt Alice's niece, aren't you?" she was gleeful. I realized then that this woman was either high or drunk as she was literally starting to bounce around the room.
"Umm, yes. I have an Aunt Alice."
"I thought I knew you. I saw *so and so* yesterday.(inject large rib crunching hug here) Hey Bubba, come here. This is my niece Lisa!"
I thought about the paint covering most of my body and politely tried to untangle myself.
"I talked to Aunt Alice last night! I wonder why she didn't tell me you were here?"
I stopped. Ok, my Aunt Alice had been dead for some years. In Lola's present condition, being as her feet weren't quite touching the floor when she walked, maybe she did talk to my aunt, but I was thankful to realize we weren't family.
"Ummm, I think there's a mix up. I don't think I'm your niece."
"What's your name again? Didn't you marry *deleted*?"
"No, must be a different person. Sorry."
"So, can I still look at the house? Let me be honest with you"
"Always a good idea, " I interject.
"I'm bi-polar. We were staying with my mom who got tired of me being under her feet. I'm an addict, drugs and alcohol. Last year, I hit bottom and was locked up for a while. We're at a motel paying $165 a week now. $165! Can you believe that? Let me be honest, I'm on meds and trying to remember to take them. I have no credit. Last year messed it up for me. When I went crazy, I lost all my credit. He doesn't either, since he's a recovering addict, too. 2 months now. I'm proud of him! Oh, and I'm OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and I like to clean. This place won't have a speck of dirt it in when I live here. My mom couldn't stand my constant cleaning. We're homeless. Please, please, please, I'm begging you! Let me be honest, I need this house. Please, please, please!"
At this point, she's pulling at my arm and her eyes are glassy as can be. There were a lot more words than I'm putting in there, but keep in mind they were uttered at breakneck speed with nary a place in between them.
"Umm, I have rental applications in the other room. If you'd like to fill one out..." I pulled myself free.
I returned and handed her an application.
She looked down at the application with a frown, "I know we know people in common. Hey, do you know One-Armed Billy? He's my kin. Everyone knows him"
"Umm, I dunno. Could be. I've been gone from here a while. I really need to get back to work on the house, though, " I fidgeted with my paint roller and politely as I could herded Lola towards the door.

I never heard a word from her again. I wasn't surprised. Now, One-Armed Billy, that's another story.