A-Maize-ing
2004-08-16, 11:17 p.m.

It just hit me.

We've lived here for seven years. It sure is nice to be back home.

Nine years ago we were somehow transplanted to the Midwest. Nice place, if you like tornadoes. And corn. Lots of corn. But there was something very disconcerting about it. Perhaps it was the total, all-consuming lack of privacy that continues, even though we haven't lived there since 1997.

Growing up in the South, one becomes accustomed to being gossip fodder. However, being genteel, said gossip is carried on in proper venues such as beauty parlors and school functions, with the end result being you yet again aren't invited to join the Junior League, assuming you would want to join anyway.

The Midwest is different. Eerily different. They stare. You cannot leave your house without being followed by those eyes. These Children of the Corn silently watch your every move as if they psychically know you're from Somewhere Else, until you sweatily hustle yourself home, lock the doors, and pull the shades. It's as if their very existence depends on sucking away your essential life force before you have a chance to escape. Every time I opened a blind I expected eyes to be positioned over the windowsills like living Kilroys. Yes we did meet some very wonderful people there, but they were the lone beacons in a flat sea of wind-beaten produce. Maybe spending 95% of your time evading twisters does something to the brain cells, who knows. After all, they live in tornado alley and NO ONE HAS A FRIGGIN BASEMENT. Didn't ANYONE see "The Wizard of Oz"? Geez. Lesson time. The kids and I spent two marvelous years trying to wedge under the sofa several times a month, while Dear Hubby hunkered down worry-free in a blast-proof automotive plant. The only things threatening to carry you away in the South are the mosquitoes the size of small aircraft, but you can deal with them with a can of Raid. It's much more difficult to shoo a funnel cloud.

Anyhoo, we received a phone call from some good friends there the other night, worried after something appeared in the bulletin of the church we used to attend. Somehow, someone either royally screwed up or had a particularly bad dream about us, because the bulletin had listed my Dear Hubby on the prayer list as being hospitalized for heart problems.

Ooooooooooooooooooookay.

I think they were rather shocked when he answered the phone, a tad breathless from power washing the patio and having freshly mown the back lawn.

We haven't visited that town since '97, had little or no contact with anyone there since our move (save the Chosen Few), but now someone has dreamed up desperate health problems for Hubby? Someone needs a hobby, stat.

Until then, I'm keeping my doors locked and shades down, just in case. They might be infiltrating.

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