It's a Lot Like Being on Star Trek

(You see this space ship right here? It's located somewhere in Wisconsin.)

"To seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

My husband and I are well aware of our country upbringing. I'm sure many from urban regions would find us backwards in a variety of ways just as our families sometimes find us to be, as they like to put it, "citified." We most likely are not the only people in America in such a situation but I wonder if others merely cringe in horror while we seem to find humor in every single situation.

Take, for example, the funeral of my husband's grandmother. Now this is not normally a situation I'd make light of but it was the first time in a long time that I'd felt as though I had stepped onto another planet. At the visitation, my husband and I stepped outside to retrieve something from our car and found his aunt and uncle drinking beer out of the back of their pickup truck. I stood frozen in sheer horror as the scene sunk in. This woman's mother was inside in a casket and here she stood, drinking a beer in the parking lot. Of course, inside his uncle was standing right next to the casket in the receiving line wearing his very best Harley Davdison shirt. Probably not the nicest thing to pick on, but it did match very well with his mullet.

Of course, the real treat was the next day. His twenty year old cousin from California, who has lived in California since she was five.... brought a date. Not her boyfriend, not someone she's known for a while... but an actual date. She had met him two days earlier.

I was on another planet. I wouldn't say I was on another planet boldly going anywhere though.... my quiet snide remarks to myself were more cowardly and petty than bold and I admit it. Seriously though... you'd have been thinking it too!