No, those are not factorials, that's the crowd counting down at the beginning of each round at the demolition derby. I can't imagine why, but it is unbelievably fun to sit in the stands about 30 feet away from a mud pit where drivers in dirt bike helmets are ramming into one another, each trying to be on of the last few cars left capable of moving. Mud was flying, cars were crashing into one another, townies were standing and cheering for their favorite cars in some of the thickest VA accents I have ever heard. And it was all in the name of the fair.
This is the second year I've gone to the demo derby, and it was twice as awesome this year. We had way better seats this time, being on the other side and not in the large stands; we were close enough to get hit with chunks of flying mud.
Almost better than watching the cars, though, is observing the people around me in the stands. Southern people can be either the kindest, funniest, craziest sumsobitches/ down-to-earth people you will ever meet, OR they can be the worst mannered, craziestsumsobitches/hateful bunch of idiots you will ever meet. Sometimes they are both. These people are the only group I can think of that have the capability to embrace both of those sets of characteristics simultaneously. I don't quite understand it, but I know it is part of what makes them unique and gives them a regional character that everyone can identify as "southern".
It's kind of fun to watch how people take pride in their camouflage, workboots, tractors, country stars, cows/pigs/horses/sheep, trucks, hats with fishing hooks, confederate flags (I know this is given a bad rap a lot, but as hinted at above, not all southerners are about hatred, some are simply trying to display pride at being part of a particular background), chewing tobacco, flannel shirts and hunting paraphernalia. I almost, almost wish that I could feel that sort of pride for a region. But then I remember there are downsides, as well. A friend once told me that she went to elementary school (in the 90's, mind you) at a very rural school outside Harrisonburg, and that most of the class didn't come to school when it was time to harvest or cut hay. As a result, you were lucky to make it out of the fifth grade able to read. Following that, I suppose the common notion about Southerners being ignorant has some basis in reality, as all stereotypes do, but it's depressing to know that even groups of people in my generation, who went to school in the same state I did, couldn't have the same education and opportunity to advance when they were younger because of the demands and stresses on region. And VA isn't even that far south.
Today I took to a defensive driving course, to get points back on my license. The people in there were mostly under the age of twenty, and seemed to be quite a motley crew. There were your typical southern boys, who work on a dairy farm/drive tractor trailers/got tickets for racing their restored Mustangs on one side. Then there were a few older people, ones who have gotten a series of speeding tickets and need to get rid of the -18 points off their licenses. One guy who owned a motorcycle and got most of his tickets from that, a punk ass looking guy with lots of tattoos and spacers in his ears who seemed to think he was too cool for school or something. A 2 month pregnant 19 year old girl who has to work the night shift every night so she can pay for college and was pissed she had to be up during her sleeping hours to attend this class ( I guess I would be too, though), a girl with multiple piercings and slash marks on her wrists who had her license taken away, one foreign woman, and our instructor - who apparently went into this line of work after he had taken the class himself ten years ago. He had gotten a speeding ticket for going 2 miles over the speed limit. I think that cop was having a bad day.
The class started off being super boring, but after lunch it actually got to be kind of interesting, in the sense that I spent most of the time trying to figure out exactly how what the guy was talking about fit into the context of the class. We began to discuss the concept of time, and how it doesn't really exist outside of your own capacity to create it. Following that logic, it seems that speed shouldn't exist, since speed is a measurement of distance/time, right? So, does that make our speeding tickets null and void? Also, if the past doesn't really exist, then why do things we have done still affect our lives?
Oh, to give the instructor a little bit of character, you should know that a) he used this voice at times that sounded like Tommy Chong when he was on That 70's Show and b) he was reading a book called Armadillos and Old Lace by (I kid you not) Kinky Friedman. Make of that what you will.
Anyway. He also lectured us on natural health and how we basically have a culture of addiction here in the U.S. People used to die from the outside, but now they are dying from the inside. This led into a discussion of drug use and its relation to driving. Although it mostly came off as him telling us he didn't approve of the drug laws in this country and that if they were different, maybe people wouldn't be using babies to transport drugs into the country. I think he might have been trying to make a point about making choices and consequences, but it really just came off as "drugs are not bad, but driving while impaired by them IS." He also cited a lot of statistics, which I don't necessarily believe to be an accurate means of proving any point, because there are a lot of unknown factors to take in. For instance, he cited some numbers about how many Americans were killed by guns vs. other countries. Well, where did these numbers come from or why are we not taking into account varying gun laws/cultural factors that relate to guns? But I did learn that if you want to avoid falling asleep at the wheel, you should hold a fifty dollar bill out the window. That will keep you awake.
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