Thursday, July 20, 2006

oh, it's funny alright, just not how he's thinking it is

So, a couple of friends of mine are looking to possibly open up a business and being the good pal that I am, I offered up my husband's real estate expertise in looking for a location for said business. Last night on the way to derby practice, one of the girls and I drove out to check out a location.

After a couple of wrong turns, we find the location, it's this fairly shabby chic large commercially-zoned house with a chainlink fenced yard. We pull into the driveway of the property and while we're looking around, I notice a couple of people on the dilapidated front porch of the dilapidated house next door. (Keep in mind that this is the deep South and it's July and the only reason to be sitting out on the porch drinking your beer is that your humble abode doesn't have air conditioning... and you're a hillbilly.)

"Oh, nothin' to worry about, it's just a couple of SCAD girls," one of the men on the porch calls out to the other man on the porch as he ambles over to take a look at us. If I told you to imagine a redneck straight from the Georgia woods, this guy is exactly what you would imagine - and there he was in front of us in all of his shirtless, bare-foot, mulleted, probably toothless glory.

Did I mention he was drunk? Because he must have been to confuse us with college students.

I was too shocked to speak, but my friend forges forward. "We're just checking out this property."

"Well, we're just wonderin' who's pullin' up in our driveway..." He was obviously trying to be scary in case he had to protect his property from tha poe-leese or a dental hygienist or something, but he ended up just being scary in the shirtless-Cletus-who-probably-has-a-rifle-on-the-kitchen-counter kind of way) "You know, it's funny, 'cuz we been livin' here for five years..."

My friend pauses because she doesn't see how this is funny to him, but lots of stuff is funny when you're drunk. "Uh, yeah, we're just checking out the property to maybe consider buying it."

"Oh, yeah? That's funny, 'cuz we been livin' here for five years. What're ya gonna do with it?" he slurs. "Open up a wine bar or some shit?"

"Um... no..."

"Well, it's jes funny, 'cuz we been livin' here for five years."

"Okay, well, we're going to get going now. You have a good evening."

"Y'all be careful."

Once we get back in the car, she turns to me. "I can't believe you didn't say anything."

"I still have a hard time believing that people like that actually exist and I was waiting to hear the 'Deliverance' banjo music."