Cue Barry Manilow...

Looks like we made it... big lips, poor scanning skills and all. Thank you my friends for supporting me and giving me feedback on the entries that got me to this point!

Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are...

Here's the thing about charm, Southern or otherwise. It's just like respect, you have to earn it. If you're nice to us, we'll charm the pants off you. If you insult us, we'll cut you down to size with a very sweet smile. We have no patience for condescending outlanders because of attitudes like this one published in my beautiful beach hometown's weekly paper.

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Is Southern charm real?

To the editor: I came to the South two years ago and have yet to witness the Southern charm the world talks about. I have a theory on why.

When northerners or any other person besides those from the South visit, spend a lot of money and then go back home, we get Southern charm. (LA: Well, duh, that's retail 101.) Now they refer to us as damn Yankees because some of us came and did not go back. (LA: Yes, it's like when distant relatives you really don't like come to visit and overstay their welcome.)

Twenty-five years ago, you could count on one hand how many millionaires lived in this area, and you could also name the few people who ran everything. (LA: Yes. We like those people. Most of us know or went to school with them. They had the charm and grace not to flaunt their wealth and looked and acted just like everybody else.) Today, more people from around the world live and thrive here. (LA: To my knowledge, few Mexicans/Ecuadorans are thriving there while doing migrant work.)

When Americans move within America, and areas see a huge change in the economy and in the future, residents should be thanking the Lord for answering their prayers and helping their family get jobs, healthcare and more money than the South had ever recorded. (LA: Actually, we never in a million years would have prayed for arrogant, assumptive assholes to join us, as the South Brunswick Islands have done quite well with the ports and international shipping, the seafood industry, and -- unfortunately -- tourism.)

Our ancestors came here; black, white, brown, yellow and so on for a better life and I sure am glad they made those bold choices for me and my family. (LA: I double dog dare you to present that argument to an African American. And I'm just guessing, but your ancestors were probably Irish and came here to escape maltreatment from the rest of Europe, not to give you a false sense of entitlement to be a total dick to others who don't share your belief system.)

If we are not from the South, then this is like foreign land, and we made the bold move to come here to not only change our lives forever but also every Southerner who is still here today. (LA: Wait, wait, wait... Did you really have the hubris to say you moved here to change my life? Was that code for irritate the hell out of me? Because that's the only way your statement was in any way accurate.) People made greedy decisions during the housing boom, and when the pyramid scheme was out of the bag some got left holding that bag.

Well, as I see the foreclosure number double and triple (LA: The proper word there would be "treble"), I don't hear any investor or speculator saying, "If my ancestors wouldn't [have] come to this country, I would not be bankrupt." It is time for everybody to stop, sit back and thank God you even had the 50 cents to buy this newspaper instead of finding ways to blame people you never even knew, calling yourself anything other than an American (unless you're not) and wishing people would stay wherever they came. (LA: What? Sorry, fell asleep halfway into that runon sentence.)

If it were decided tomorrow to go back 25 years and never migrate to this beautiful area, then this area would still be picking tobacco and cotton. (LA: That makes no sense at all.)

Southern charm is like most anything else; you either always had it and always will or you'll just fake it. Nobody needs to move anywhere. (LA: Actually, you can move the hell back where you came from. Kthxbai.)

You just need to know you are who you are and nobody and no amount of money will change that. (LA: You obviously have no sense of irony.)

If you want to thank or praise anyone, make it the Lord, who put us all together for good, not the bad.

Enjoy the hand you where dealt (LA: Were, not where. You're really making that difficult), and God bless everyone, and God bless America.

Ralph E. McClernan, Calabash

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I drafted this letter to the editor of the local paper:

Editor:

In a letter titled, "Is Southern Charm Real?" (May 1, 2008), a reader suggests: "If it were decided tomorrow to go back 25 years and never migrate to this beautiful area, then this area would still be picking tobacco and cotton."

Well. Got me there. I can't argue with that statement because I can't find the subject of the first clause and therefore cannot follow the logic.

I wasn't picking cotton or tobacco in Brunswick County 25 years ago, I was learning basic sentence structure at Shallotte Middle School.

Perhaps the author's tax dollars would be better spent improving fundamental education in his native school system.

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UPDATE: The letter ran and generated a slew of "Hell, yeah," and "Go girl!" comments on the paper's Web site. The letter writer never came back with a rebuttal. His jackass reputation stretches halfway up the East Coast (see comments). Tee hee.

The curious incident...

I was on the deck, smoking the day's last cigarette in the pitch dark while listening to old Ministry on my iPod and reliving my glory days of stomping around the industrial club in my big, black boots and velvet/tulle/leather, size 4 ensembles.

Then it licked my hand. "It" being a neighbor's 100-pound golden retriever, which had escaped its own backyard, leaped the fence into mine, ambled up the stairs to my deck and passed behind me before settling at my right side. I hadn't seen, heard, smelled or felt it approaching me.

I screamed bloody murder. It was probably only three seconds from the lick to the scream to the realization that a big, friendly dog had joined me, but it felt like hours of sheer terror.

I collected myself, then led big doggy, who, by the grace of God hadn't bitten me after I screamed at it, by its collar down the stairs and through the gate and encouraged it to go to its person, who was in his front yard across the street calling for it.

Still shaking, I went back in the house and hovered in the front room for half an hour, waiting for the police to show up after one of the neighbors had surely reported the screaming to the police. They never showed. And even though I was embarrassed, I was even more offended.

When I related this story to my friend Laura today, she said, "Maybe that old lady next door heard you and thought, 'Good. She's being attacked by a bear.'"

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UPDATE:

Well, now that I've seen her in the daylight, I know she's a chocolate lab, not a golden retriever. And since I coaxed her out of mean old lady's backyard into ours so MOL wouldn't call animal control, I know, from her collar, that her name is Sally.

First thing I did was try to lead her home, and I saw that neither photographer man nor designer woman were there. So I brought her back here to our back deck and called the number on her collar. It was apparently the home number and nobody was home. I looked up the number to photographer man's studio and gave him a call. He is such an artist with poor interpersonal skills. He told me that sometimes they have a key in a certain place and to look for it and let her into the house, otherwise please try to keep her in my backyard.

I told him I'd try both. Then he said, "I saw your picture in the paper, so are you going to be writing for them?" "Yes," I responded, I'll be a Lifestyles columnist."

"Okay. Thanks. Bye."

I took Sally across the street, couldn't find a key, but did find her lead and put her back in their backyard. I'm expecting her back any time now.

When a mommy and a daddy love each other...

I was talking to Daddy yesterday while Mama was out. He told me he'd read the story about Steve, Joshua and traveling and that he'd enjoyed it. He suggested I use it for my first N&O column.

I told him the first column, coming out June 24, will be "My Father's Sons." "You know," I told him, "the one about how you treated us like boys when we were kids."

He chuckled and said, "I didn't realize I did that."

"Looking back," I reassured him, "I wouldn't change a thing."

Shooting guns and diving for clams made me brave. Being told my epidermis was showing made me sarcastic.

My mother instilled in me manners, a sense of empathy and the importance of hair care. She made me feel pretty and special when I was really just a bratty princess making her life difficult. She also told me that I could be anything I wanted, that I was smart and the world was out there for me.

So here I am, a product of two attractive people who met by accident in Wilmington in 1965, when my daddy's best friend was courting my mother. Thank the lord that my mother and that guy broke up and that she happened to spot my daddy coming out of a Beatles movie and dropped her proper Southern manners long enough to roll down her window and yell, "Call me!"

Shameless, I tell you. Shameless. And awesome.

Get off my property!

I really need to get out of the house. I'm turning into MOL (that's mean old lady next door for those of you who don't know the back story). God help me.

To be fair, it was Saturday, I'm on sabbatical, Steve's in Australia, and the only human being I'd spent one-on-one time with all week was a 77-year-old man on Tuesday who talked about himself nonstop without asking me any questions. So I was cranky and lonely. Just like... nope, won't say it. She's evil.

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It was my naptime, but I saw that "The Blue Lagoon" was on cable. And I watched it all the way through. For whatever reason, I thought it would be as engrossing and swoon-worthy as it was when I'd watch it as a kid on HBO with the sound turned down low so my parents wouldn't wake up and catch me watching an R-rated movie. I found that watching it through the eyes of a grownup is nearly impossible. Suspension of disbelief while watching "Gilligan's Island" is easier.

I mean, come on! The kids found the indigenous, human-sacrificing drum people, but the drum people never found their elaborate, beachfront fortress? The boy kept getting mad at the girl and trying to leave in a homemade sailboat that inevitably collapsed when they had the well-preserved dinghy all along? Don't even get me started on the pristine, well-pressed white cotton clothes the girl and the baby dressed up in. Steve's professionally laundered button ups he bought a year ago are dingier than those apparently saved in a trunk for a decade.

It occurred to me then that the only reason we watched it over and over as kids was because of Christopher Atkins's nekkid swimming scene; which, of course was edited out for cable.

Irritated with myself for wasting two hours of my life that could have been spent napping, I switched off the TV. I was trying to go to sleep and heard loud talking outside. I looked out the window and saw MOL in her yard talking to a man in our yard.

I marched outside and said, "Can I help you?" The man said, "I was just talking to your neighbor." "Do you mind doing it in her yard?," I demanded. Then I recognized him as the son of the elderly man on the corner, the same man who chainsawed trees for me after the hurricane 11 years ago. They were talking about the certified letter everybody in the neighborhood has gotten from the city telling us we now have to pay them to maintain that 15-foot drop to Wake Forest Road in our backyards.

MOL skittered away and the man, whose name I now know is Mike, started talking to me. For an hour and 15 minutes. I was hot and dehydrated, but feeling like a very, very bad person for being rude. To him, not MOL. I apologized over and over.

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Today I had bellinis and delicious brunch with my friend Laura. I really needed to go out and play with a kid my own age. Now I feel much better. And more likely to be kind to my fellow human beings. Well, most of them.

Junior Explorers' Club for Boys

When I told co-workers that Steve would be traveling to Australia and England during my sabbatical, they asked me if I would be going with him. I told them I wouldn't, citing the weakness of the dollar right now making everything horribly expensive. As in too expensive for us to hire a private nurse to keep me sedated and hydrated while applying fresh nicotine patches every hour.

I'm not afraid of flying by any means. I'll take off to New York to eat, drink and shop in a heartbeat. But New York is an hour and 15 minutes away. Otherwise, I am a terrible, bratty traveler. Even when we drive two and a half hours to see my parents, I have to pack my bag of fun containing magazines, cryptograms and my iPod. Steve gave me a portable DVD player for Christmas, and it keeps me from whining. (My daddy called Steve out on that, saying it was more for Steve than for me, which is true.)

Steve's trip to Australia this time was a nightmare. His itinerary called for a flight from Raleigh to New York, New York to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Perth. During Pacific typhoon season.

The Hong Kong flight was diverted to Taiwan. The plane landed for refueling, but none of the passengers could get off the plane, as none of them had Taiwanese visas. They then headed for Hong Kong and circled the airport for a couple of hours before the pilots decided to make a very daring landing.

After being on the same plane for 22 hours, Steve had long since missed his connection and had to spend the night in Hong Kong. He got to Australia a day late and three days ahead of his luggage. "Nipped off to the Australian version of Wal-Mart for jocks-n-socks," he wrote me.

The crazy part is that he loves this stuff! I theorize it's because he's English, and that desire to explore and conquer is in his blood. You could probably go to deepest Borneo or the remotest part of Antarctica and be greeted by a Brit offering you a cup of tea.

When we were kids, the same age but 4,000 miles apart, as I was practicing my shuffle-skate moves in our carport to the tunes of Donna Summer, Steve was lying on his stomach in his bedroom, poring over atlases and maps, planning his imaginary adventures. Now, (cough) years later, he has a job that takes him all over the world, to places most people would never get to see.

As he's 15 hours ahead of me right now, Steve e-mailed me to let me know he'd arrived safely and described his travel in great detail. I shared the e-mail with my mother, who made me promise to share it with my sister with the promise she share it with my nephew Joshua, who is apparently very into maps.

I told Steve about Joshua's interest on the phone the next day, and he nearly squealed with delight. He's always pulling out the atlas and trying to teach me things. I can only focus on these teachings briefly before my mind wanders back to celebrity gossip. But now, Uncle Steve has a protege! A mind to mold with the wonders of the world! Another person to share his passion for maps and geography!

Steve excitedly e-mailed Joshua about his travels, embedding a map in the prose. He promised to bring Joshua maps from all his travels. Then, being a good uncle, he e-mailed my sister and asked her what Banyan was interested in so he could bring him presents, too. Jill e-mailed him back: "Banyan's really into the Pogues."

The Pogues? He's seven.

So now I have an image in my head of nine-year-old Joshua lying on his stomach in his bedroom in Vermont, poring over atlases and maps, planning his imaginary adventures. In the same room, the already world-weary Banyan slumps in his chair, crooning along with the ever demure and coquettish Shane MacGowan:

"It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank.
An old man said to me
Won't see another one..."

But it gives me hope. Joshua and Uncle Steve can jet off to Papua New Guinea 20 years from now. Banyan and I will sit in an Irish pub, drinking stouts and pondering what to do should we fall from grace with God.

Pogues Fairytale In New York
Uploaded by stevanhogg

Vignette from a story in the making (NSFAJ)

(Background: I'm helping a fancy elderly man write his memoirs. We've spoken on the phone and e-mailed. Today, I met him in person for the first time.)

I couldn't believe I was sitting there at the Olive Garden in Cary. It was packed with suburban people and their suburban children who'd arrived in their suburban SUVs. It was so loud I was straining to hear my companion talk on and on and on about himself without ever pausing except to let me agree that he is, indeed, a fascinating person with a story to tell.

He leaned in closer and his dancing blue eyes took on a more serious expression. "I have slept with boys and girls," he said, pausing to see my reaction. If he was trying to shock me, he only succeeded in doing so by telling me he'd slept with girls. "But I don't want to write a sex book. I find that distasteful."

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He's writing a book, but I'm going to have a book's worth of material by the time we're done.