HICK – A derogatory slang term for lower class whites raised in rural areas, usually within trailer parks or hog farms. Generally used more for Midwesterners than Southerners (see: redneck)

When Dad and our Step-Mom, MsB, were up from North Carolina last month for a visit, we all decided one night to go out to dinner at Swiss Chalet. All of us as in Lex and her other half, her two girls and myself and Dad and MsB. So there we all are together, talking and laughing and finishing up our various chicken dinners. Dad and MsB have been married now about 3 years, I believe.

We LOVE MsB, she is sweet, and kind, and she cooks up some fantastic southern fare. Makes your mouth water…primarily due to the loads of salt and fat it’s all cooked with. It’s heaven on a plate. Cholesterol who? Healthy eating be damned and go f your self blood vessels, this chick is going to feast and fill her face and go back for seconds.

And her other fine quality is that she genuinely, with every inch of heart, loves my Dad. You could see it in the way she looks at him. And he for her. Mom would be proud of him, he’s done well.

MsB and Dad met in the time between when he first met my Mom working tobacco one summer, and he decided to go back up to Canada the next. They met in a bowling alley almost 50 years ago back in North Carolina just after he had finished his service with the National Guard. It was the winter after he met Mom. He went back up to Canada that summer, and married Mom 3 months after he arrived.

However if things had been different, he might have married her instead. She’s loved him all this time. Through her own marriage to a man she loved deeply, her children, and through her husband’s death to cancer; throughout she said she never forgot our Dad. Their song is “I wanna hold your hand” by the Beatles. My Dad says “well, I wanted to do more than that, but her hand was fine”. And he smiles his Cheshire cat grin and looks at her.

So here we all are out for dinner, having a good time, and my youngest niece says she has to go pee. Well, of course that means the older one will have to go with her, strength in numbers. They trot off around the corner and we carry on eating. Brenda has this rather quiet confidence about her, and her presence always makes us feel like a family again.

About 5 minutes go by. Then we hear this blood-curdling scream from the direction of the bathroom, followed about 5 seconds later by laughter outside the door. My sis says, “Oh no, they must have an automatic flush toilet”.

I’m like, “really? Your child has never seen an automatic flush toilet? Seriously? And that’s how she reacts? ;-)

So off my sister goes to make sure the girls make it back to our table without encountering other modern horrors, I don’t know, maybe suffer brain damage when they go to wash their hands and the water starts on its own.

So back she comes with her sheltered progeny, and we’re all laughing away, cracking jokes.

Can’t stop giggling though. Giggling away… think I’m giggled out…. so I take a drink of my water.

Nope. Mouth full of water and realize I am in fact NOT done giggling…and proceed to spray my step-mom, practically full in the face too, with everything that was in my mouth. Yup. I did it. Sprayed my Dad’s beautiful, southern lady all over the right side of her body. All over… like she’s covered in my spit. It is all up and down her bare arm, across her shirt, into her hair, all on the right side of her face. My spit. EVERYWHERE.

Guess she’s really part of the family now that she’s been christened officially by the eldest daughter. She is so polite, she just laughed and wiped herself off with a napkin.

Good grief, I can’t imagine what she thinks of us. And some people would dare to call her a “hick” cause she’s southern, like riiiiighhht, she must be thinking.