Proud I am sure that you have heard of the Home and Garden Show that stations itself at every fairground in the US to encourage gardeners to grow pumpkins the size of a Smart Cars and to coerce nongardeners to envelope their homes in copper guttering which, at the price of copper today, will be removed within a week by some industrious n’er-do-well needing cash for a big screen tv. Well, my darling daughter had two exhibitors’ passes for this past weekend and she asked if I would like to go with her to this show of shows. Now, it’s a great thing to get to go to this yearly event, but for a daughter to actually be caught with her mother in public and on PURPOSE is a cause for celebration indeed! Of course, my answer to her invite was a definitive, “Do pigs fly?” which is a much more genteel response than the one asking what bears do in the woods even though it makes absolutely no sense at all. She knew what I meant. And so we did what any two red-blooded, southern women do and bundled up against what we considered a life-threatening 32 degrees. We drove across town to the beautiful OKC Fairgrounds, parked the car and walked to the building that we decided was obviously the first of 5 total exhibition buildings. I thought it odd that the steps were full of men in camouflage, smoking cigarettes and huddling to discuss who-knows-what, but I attributed it to true southern gentlemen who had brought their wives to the show even though it would have taken one of the John Deere Zero Radius mowers, displayed at the show, to physically drag them into the actual building to look at the latest fiberglass hot tubs. Now, I have to tell you here that there is a certain sense of power that goes with having “exhibitor” badges. One need only flash these jewels at the TSA wannabes manning the doors and you are waved through with an “Oh! Go on in!” as the poor slubs with tickets must stand there and watch you waltz through while they have their wrists stamped to prove that they are NOT exhibitors. Only, at that particular moment, our passes didn’t mean much. As we waved our badges, I instantly noted that it was almost all men in the building – men in camouflage – and there were tables and tables of every kind of weapon of mass destruction that any self-respecting varmint hunter would be proud to call his own. It was at that moment that I and the attendant announced at the same time, “Gun Show!” My daughter and I backed out and headed to the next group of buildings where we would find weapons equally as deadly to our pocketbooks and our health – waterless cookware, full goldfish ponds with 8 ft manmade waterfalls and German Cream Cheese Strudel. And you know what? When we finally found that first Home and Garden Show building, I thought it odd that standing on the steps to the entrance were huddled groups of men in camouflage, smoking cigarettes and discussing who-knows-what. Yep. This is good ol’ Oklahoma!!
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