babybloomr

On Labor Day weekend the girls and I headed down to Arkansas for a quick visit with Mom and Dad.

I figure I have made this trip roughly a gazillion times in the 33 years we have lived in Nashville, and the travel time varies widely depending on several factors. It can take anywhere from a little over six hours to well over eight. Back in the day (B.C.– ‘before children’) when Russ and I were traveling alone, we would always factor in extra time for stopping along the way if anything looked interesting (antique stores for me, sporting goods stores for him.) We had the freedom to waste an hour or so trying to track down some obscure meat and three or barbeque joint somebody told us about. And even if we couldn’t find it, we could still hit some old favorites like that great hotel restaurant they used to have in Brinkley with those fabulous big honkin’ yeast rolls…

Sometimes we would abandon the interstate altogether and just wander down scenic back roads for awhile, driving past family farms and cotton fields and sleepy Southern towns. Those meandering trips definitely added some time to our drive, but hey, we were young, energetic and unencumbered. If we happened to be in a big hurry to get home to Arkansas we’d put the pedal to the metal (as much as you can while driving a Ford Pinto), stopping only for gas and the rare bathroom stop. Well, rare for me, Russ has a bladder the size of a peanut but I honed my “holding it” skills on the all-male Imperials bus– I bet my record for traveling the longest period of time without a rest stop still stands! I went to great lengths to avoid peeing in some funky gas station bathroom where the heavily tattooed, chain-smoking attendant would hand me a key attached to a beat-up wooden paddle with LADIES written on it in magic marker,  jerk her head towards the door and say, “It’s around back.”

*shudders at the memory*

When Madi was a baby I used to ride in the back seat with her so I could read books, distract her with toys and replace the ever-present pacifier if it happened to fall out. And may I just take a moment here to say God bless whoever invented the paci– it saved my sanity many, many times. Those trips always took much longer, because we would pull the car over every time I needed to nurse or change a diaper. Of course by the time Charlotte came along, I could skillfully whip that child out of the carseat, hold her with one hand and do whatever I needed to while simultaneously switching out the Barney tape in the little AC/DC television we propped up between the seats to keep Madi occupied. By that time our growing family included a couple of cats, so we had the added distraction of  meowing felines roaming through the car, not to mention their portable litter box.  I also not-so-nostalgically remember that Deco, the Himalayan, had a tendency towards carsickness so we had to drug her with kitty Benadryl which made her kind of drunk, drooly, and feeling like she needed to be all up in my face the whole trip. Good times.

The pet factor reached its zenith when the girls were in grade school. We actually traveled back and forth to Arkansas with two kids, three dogs, one huge tail-less cat and a cockatiel. I swear, those trips lasted for-stinkin’-ever. Between bathroom breaks, getting snacks, fueling the car and taking the dogs out it felt like we were stopping every five minutes. We learned to ignore the pointing and laughing, but one time when we were eating at Sonic in Memphis a woman startled me by tapping on the window and asking if I minded if she brought her husband over to take a look at our traveling menagerie. “He always tells me I’m nuts because I want to take our poodle with us when we travel,” she explained. “I want to show him what crazy REALLY looks like!”

These days, at least when we’re traveling without the three yappers, we can knock it out in around six hours if we really want to. On our Labor Day trip we were kind of on a schedule because everyone was planning on coming over to Mom and Dad’s for dinner that night. Since the girls and I left about thirty minutes later than we had planned, we really needed to make good time. Fully prepared to resist the lure of random antique malls, dairy bars and roadside fruit stands, we were well on our way when just this side of Jackson I decided to fill up the car… and we stumbled upon THIS:

Now in all my years of traveling I-40, I have no memory of ever stopping here. Because seriously? I WOULD REMEMBER!

It may look like just your basic truckstop from this angle, but honey– right across the parking lot there is this rambling old two story building crammed full, stuffed to the gills and spilling over with every kind of junky trinket/cheesy souvenir/godawful jimcrack and gewgaw you have ever seen in your entire long-legged life! It looks like Tijuana threw up all over it! It’s where tacky comes to die!

The girls took one look at the row upon row of schlocky knickknacks piled up in bushel baskets and set out on shelves in front of the entrance, jumped out of the car and ran towards that dusty, beat-up building with their arms open wide. I think I saw rainbows and hearts shooting out of their heads. They may or may not have spontaneously burst into song.

I’m not sure, because I was stunned into silence by the sheer force of the AMOUNT OF CRAP I was looking at.

Behold:

Wanna closer look?

Why is there a big wad of fuzzy paint rollers next to the moldering fake Mayan statuettes and the giant bucket of clay marbles/eggs? I have no idea.

However, to be fair, they did appear to have some of their merchandise separated into categories. There was the Western Enthusiasts area:

Which was adjacent to the Religious Section:

Madi appeared to particularly enjoy the Pre-Columbian Artifacts department:

While Charlotte casually strolled past the Nautical Statue Corner on her way inside…

That’s right, I said ‘inside.’

I’M BARELY GETTING WARMED UP HERE, PEOPLE!!!

I mentioned there were TWO floors, right?

Shelf after shelf, everywhere you looked… it went on FOREVER:

Some things were a little hard to identify:

Some things seemed a little out of place:

Some things… we didn’t even want to ask:

All in all, it was the weirdest place I’ve ever seen in my whole dang life, but I do have to admit, it was kind of fun. I think Madi plans on holding her wedding there. So yes, the next time we are anywhere near exit 101 on I-30, we will definitely stop by again and say hello to the friendly proprietors of the place we now affectionately refer to as “The Craptastic Emporium.”  What’s not to love about somebody who has the nerve to fill up an entire building with truckloads of worthless junk and actually charge cold, hard American cash money for it?

They’ve certainly got balls!

Also?

Swords.

The End.

How many of you saw the movie “Pay It Forward” with that Haley Joel Whatever kid and Helen Hunt? Show of hands?

I didn’t– but I’m pretty sure I get the basic concept, which is that you repay a good turn that was done to you by doing a good turn to someone else– not the original person that did something nice for you, but to a third party, preferably a stranger. Or something like that. I try not to bog down in things like *fingers making air quotes* “details”, which is just one of the many, many reasons I am a blogger and not, say, a contract lawyer. Anyway, I remember that when the film came out it spawned a lot of talk about going around and performing Random Acts of Kindness in the world, blah blah blah, kum by ya.

OK, so the girls and I went to Arkansas over the Labor Day weekend to visit my folks. My brother Matt and his wife Carol came down too, which meant that Mom and Dad had a houseful, which they love.

(They are doing pretty well, by the way. So many of you sweet people have asked about them, thank you. Daddy is still kind of quiet and frail, but I swear it seemed like his mind was maybe even a little sharper than when we were there in July– he was making jokes!)

Anywho, one morning I got up before anyone else and decided to run down to Starbucks instead of making a pot of coffee, because HELLO–it’s pumpkin spice latte season again, thank the good Lord and cue the singing angels! So I’m all bedhead-y and barely awake, and after I told the little box what I wanted, I just sat there in the car waiting for my turn to pull up to the window. I was behind a woman of indeterminate age in a pickup truck, and as I blearily stared straight ahead I noticed that she was kind of bouncing around the front seat, I guess to the music from her radio. Just as I was thinking, “Uh, I don’t think that one needs any MORE caffeine…” she caught my eye in her rear view mirror, smiled a big ol’ smile and waved really energetically, like she was trying to flag down a cab or something.

Being a true Southern woman, I immediately waved back, while muttering quietly through my fake smile, “I have no idea who you are, lady.”  I figured she had mistaken me for someone else, or since Benton is a relatively small town, maybe I had met her once somewhere through my sisters. (Possibly Liz– you can’t walk five feet in Walmart with her without running into someone she knows from church, her neighborhood, her preschool, Bunko, etc. Seriously, she should run for mayor.) As soon as Bouncy McHappyPants drove away, I pulled up to the window in order to receive The Sacred Pumpkin Spice Latte of Goodness, but as I started to hand over my five dollar bill the girl in the window said, “Your coffee has already been paid for. The lady in front of you said to have a great day!” I apparently looked as confused as I felt because the girl then added, “She doesn’t know you, or anything– she was just being nice.” I drove away feeling slightly embarrassed, mainly because I was so caught off-guard that I had fervently thanked the Starbucks girl as though SHE had bought my coffee and also because it wasn’t until I was about 6 blocks away that it dawned on me that I should have turned right around and offered to pay for the person behind me!  Or at least I could have stuck my $5 in the tip jar, for crying out loud.

I do have to tell you, though– the whole thing kind of made my day.

Fast-forward to this morning. I dropped the girls off at school, and as I was draining the last drop of my first-cup-of-the-morning coffee, I suddenly remembered the… say it with me… pumpkin spice lattes! Even though I am married to Russ Taff the Coffee King, I’m really only about a one cup a day kind of girl, so deciding to go for the latte right after I finished drinking a big mug of coffee was like Mardi Gras for me– woo hoo, Tori’s walking on the wild side! As I pulled into Starbucks, I thought, ‘Hey, this would be a great time to do that pay it forward thing”– but then I realized I wasn’t really sure how it worked. What if the person behind me happened to be picking up coffee for their entire office and when I say I want to pay for their order the girl says, “Great– that’ll be $300, please.” Or what if the person behind me is a big puppy-kicking jerk who doesn’t deserve a free cup of coffee? Or maybe some crazy drug addict with a trunk full of meth and firearms? I decided I’d get in line and keep my eyes peeled to see if I could figure out if the lucky person who pulled in behind me was truly ‘random act of kindness’-worthy. I was secretly hoping for a sweet little old lady who had scraped together her pension money to treat herself to a Starbucks coffee and would be overwhelmed by my generosity. Preferably driving a really old beat-up car and wearing a bun. (Remember the granny in those Sylvester and Tweetie Bird cartoons? Yeah– like her.)

Ironically, there wasn’t anyone behind me AT ALL until right before I ordered my latte. A black sedan finally joined the line, but I had a hard time getting a good look at the driver. It appeared to a large, middle-aged man who didn’t look very happy and a woman (his wife? his daughter?) sitting in the passenger seat. After I told the box what I wanted, I kept craning my neck around and checking all of my mirrors to see if I could get a better look at them until I noticed that the guy was sitting there tapping the steering wheel impatiently waiting for his chance to order while I held up the line with my rubbernecking. As I slowly rolled forward I decided that I was just going to wait and do this whole be-nice-to-a-stranger thing another day. Maybe next time I’d be in front of somebody more deserving than a frowny, finger-drumming guy in an old Lincoln.  (And yes, I am Hall Monitor for the entire world, thanks for asking.) But after a minute or two, I got over myself. After all, that nice lady in Arkansas saw a ponytailed, middle-aged blonde zombie wearing scratched sunglasses and hastily applied lipstick in her rearview mirror, and she still decided to buy me a latte!

I left my window rolled down so I could shamelessly eavesdrop on the people in the big black car. I couldn’t hear their order, but I did hear the Starbucks person say, “OK, that’ll be $5.85. Drive around please.” When I got to the window, I leaned in and said in a conspiratorial voice, “I’m going to pay for the people behind me, too.” The barista looked a little surprised, but shrugged and said, “Sure.” As he handed over my change and carefully placed a container of precious punkin’ coffee in my eager little hand, I added, “Also? Tell them that I said I hope they have a great day!” Then I smiled beatifically– much like I imagine Mother Theresa would in the same situation –and floated out of the parking lot on a pink puffy pink cloud of self-righteousness and good will…

It was awesome.

So, even though it is kind of a cliche, I heartily recommend paying it forward in the Starbucks line, or any other situation you can think of that involves surprising a total stranger with something nice while remaining anonymous.

Have any of you guys ever done anything like that? And do you have any suggestions for other fun ways to do it?

(BTW:  Starbucks ain’t paying me diddly– I just love their dang lattes!)