by Carol Schacter
Miss Kindergarten America of 1984 hitched up her garters and teetered back to her hotel room overlooking the boardwalk. She was a very small beauty queen and it had been a tiring day, the most exciting day of her whole life. She had done it! She had won the title and next year, Mommy promised, she could enter the preliminaries for the Miss Pre-Sub-Teen America pageant. Oh, Mommy was so happy!
As soon as she closed the door, she stepped out of her high heels and ripped of her girdle. Gee, that felt good! Standing all afternoon at the Coketail press party had been awful.
She undressed and stood at the mirror, looking at her figure. When she had reached the semifinals, she had stopped eating cookies and ice cream and started smoking. Then she had really lost a lot of weight. Daddy called it "baby fat" and said leave it alone, but Mommy said after all, the child is five and it's about time she thought about her shape. (She didn't really like the taste of cigarettes too much, but ever since the sixth graders got their own smoking lounge at school, all the younger kids sneaked a few drags at recess, hiding under the slide. And then it got to be a habit.)
She carefully removed her makeup with some Big Idea Moisturizing Cleanser, slapped on some Big Idea Skin Freshener and Big Idea Hormone Night Cream. She considered not setting her hair but knew it was hopeless. Her perm was growing out and this morning Kenneth had teased her hair so much (to make it look natural), she knew it would collapse over night. Maybe she'd run in for a comb-out after breakfast.
A half hour later all the rollers were in place and she rubbed her aching arms. She laid out her dress for the next day's festivities - a stunning little nothing from Saks, all shape and line. She'd be able to wear it to the PTA first-grade dancing classes next year, so $89.95 wasn't really expensive. Even Mommy had said it was a thoughtful investment.
She set her clock-TV for 6:30 and tucked in her doll family for the night. Santa Claus had brought her the whole set last Christmas. It came in a big box with three double beds and a new educational toy, "The Mating Game." There was Grandma Barbie and Grandpa Kin and Daughter Sally and Son-in-Law Rob and their daughter Lolly and her boyfriend Tom. Sally come equipped with snap-on bosoms and snap-on tummies and a yummy wardrobe of maternity clothes so you could pretend she was in all different "months."
She got under the covers and lay on her side, her arms and legs curled up under her chin. The rollers hurt like anything. She thought how nice it would be to go home and see Daddy. She really hadn't spent much time with him since Tabitha Carleton's fifth birthday coming-out party. Ever since that night she'd been busy working for the title.
The party had been lots of fun but, gee, what a mess after those third-grade boys crashed it and spiked all the Cokes. All those broken windows and doll furniture thrown all over the beach....But still, it was the publicity that had started her on the road to the crown. Mommy took her straight to the modeling agency in New York, and she hadn't been so busy since she was three and a cheerleader for the Little Punks Tiny Football League. Now here she was, at last, Miss Kindergarten America.
She tried and tried to find a comfortable position but something didn't feel quite right. Something was missing. Then she remembered and ran over to the closet. Oh good! No one had found the bag she had stuffed behind her mink stole. She went back to bed. With her mangy teddy bear, and old plush elephant, and a somewhat soiled rag doll cuddled fiercly in her arms, she fell sound asleep.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
South Postpones Rising Again For Yet Another Year
from The Onion, April 12, 2000
HUNTSVILLE, AL–For the 135th straight year since Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, representatives for the South announced Monday that the region has postponed plans to rise again.
"Make no mistake, the South shall rise again," said Knox Pritchard, president of the Huntsville-based Alliance Of Confederate States. "But we're just not quite ready to do it now. Hopefully, we'll be able to rise again real soon, maybe even in 2001."
Pritchard's fellow Southerners shared his confidence.
"Yes, sir. The South will rise again, and when it does, I'll be right up front waving the Stars and Bars," said Dock Mullins of Decatur, GA. "But first, I gotta get my truck fixed and get that rusty old stove out of my yard."
"Lord willing, and the creek don't rise, we gonna rise again," said Sumter, SC, radiator technician Hap Slidell, who describes himself as "Southern by the grace of God." "I don't know exactly when we're gonna do it, but one of these days, we're gonna show them Yankees how it's done."
"Save your Confederate dollars," Slidell added. "You can bet on that."
The Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Tennessee consistently rank at the bottom of the nation in a wide variety of statistical categories, including literacy, infant mortality, hospital beds, toilet-paper sales, and shoe usage. Even so, some experts believe the region could be poised for a renaissance.
The way things stand, things in the Deep South almost have to get better. Otherwise, the people who live there will devolve into preverbal, overall-wearing sub-morons within a century," said Professor Dennis Lassiter of Princeton University. "Either Southerners will start improving themselves, or they'll be sold to middle-class Asians as pets."
"My constituents are decent, hard-working folk," said Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in his 22nd annual "Next Year, By God!" speech on the steps of North Carolina's capitol building. "We are a proud people who mayn't have all that much fancy-pants book-learnin', but we live and die with pride in our proud heritage and the dignity of our forebears."
Helms' speech was met with nearly 25 minutes of enthusiastic hoots and rebel yells by the 15,000 drunk, unemployed tobacco pickers in attendance.
Though Southerners are overwhelmingly in favor of rising again, few were able to provide specific details of the rising-again process.
"I don't know, I reckon we'll build us a bunch of big, fancy buildins and pave us up a whole mess of roads," said Bobby Lee Fuller of Greenville, MS. "I ain't exactly sure where we're gonna get the money for that, but when Johnny Reb sets his mind to something, you best get out of his way."
"Oh, it'll happen, sure as the sun come up in the morning," said Buford Comstock, 26, a student at Over 'N' Back Diesel Driving School in Union City, TN. "The South is gonna rise up, just as soon as we get together and get all our shit back in one sock. Then, look out, Northerners!"
"Yesiree," Comstock added, "one day soon, the Mason-Dixon Line will be the boundary between a great nation and one whose time done passed."
HUNTSVILLE, AL–For the 135th straight year since Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, representatives for the South announced Monday that the region has postponed plans to rise again.
"Make no mistake, the South shall rise again," said Knox Pritchard, president of the Huntsville-based Alliance Of Confederate States. "But we're just not quite ready to do it now. Hopefully, we'll be able to rise again real soon, maybe even in 2001."
Pritchard's fellow Southerners shared his confidence.
"Yes, sir. The South will rise again, and when it does, I'll be right up front waving the Stars and Bars," said Dock Mullins of Decatur, GA. "But first, I gotta get my truck fixed and get that rusty old stove out of my yard."
"Lord willing, and the creek don't rise, we gonna rise again," said Sumter, SC, radiator technician Hap Slidell, who describes himself as "Southern by the grace of God." "I don't know exactly when we're gonna do it, but one of these days, we're gonna show them Yankees how it's done."
"Save your Confederate dollars," Slidell added. "You can bet on that."
The Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Tennessee consistently rank at the bottom of the nation in a wide variety of statistical categories, including literacy, infant mortality, hospital beds, toilet-paper sales, and shoe usage. Even so, some experts believe the region could be poised for a renaissance.
The way things stand, things in the Deep South almost have to get better. Otherwise, the people who live there will devolve into preverbal, overall-wearing sub-morons within a century," said Professor Dennis Lassiter of Princeton University. "Either Southerners will start improving themselves, or they'll be sold to middle-class Asians as pets."
"My constituents are decent, hard-working folk," said Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in his 22nd annual "Next Year, By God!" speech on the steps of North Carolina's capitol building. "We are a proud people who mayn't have all that much fancy-pants book-learnin', but we live and die with pride in our proud heritage and the dignity of our forebears."
Helms' speech was met with nearly 25 minutes of enthusiastic hoots and rebel yells by the 15,000 drunk, unemployed tobacco pickers in attendance.
Though Southerners are overwhelmingly in favor of rising again, few were able to provide specific details of the rising-again process.
"I don't know, I reckon we'll build us a bunch of big, fancy buildins and pave us up a whole mess of roads," said Bobby Lee Fuller of Greenville, MS. "I ain't exactly sure where we're gonna get the money for that, but when Johnny Reb sets his mind to something, you best get out of his way."
"Oh, it'll happen, sure as the sun come up in the morning," said Buford Comstock, 26, a student at Over 'N' Back Diesel Driving School in Union City, TN. "The South is gonna rise up, just as soon as we get together and get all our shit back in one sock. Then, look out, Northerners!"
"Yesiree," Comstock added, "one day soon, the Mason-Dixon Line will be the boundary between a great nation and one whose time done passed."
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