What are a rednecks last words?

Hey, watch this!

Speaking as someone with some redneck cred, that is a funny joke.

Do you know why?

Because it’s true.

Weighing possible outcomes is a weakness of my native people. They just don’t take everything into consideration.

In the third grade, a boy in my class broke his arm jumping off the welfare apartment using a sheet for a parachute. No one was surprised. He was sort of a hero, like Evil Knevil. That cast was a badge of honor. He had taken a chance, it would have been spectacular if he had made it.

Many of our most important cultural tales contain the phases, “We was all about half tanked up” and/or “that’s when I knew I was blowed up”. Almost all are stories of devastation to property, bodily injury, and economic loss. They chronicle quests for bootleg whiskey, the theft of brides, racing cars, robbing banks, and practical jokes, just to name a few. The thing almost all of them have in common, whether they end in failure or success, is that the process of trying to obtain these goals is much more important than the outcome. Sure the story turns on the moment they know that they was blowed up, but that’s not what it’s about, it’s about getting to that point.

The reason that things do not work out most of the time almost always lies in not taking all things into consideration. Maybe they didn’t know about the new police car, that the train didn’t stop in the next town on Tuesday, the watermelon patch was guarded by a big mean dog, or sheets just don’t work like parachutes on a fifteen foot drop. It just never occurred to them, they had a plan, and attempted to execute that plan. They ended up in jail, up a tree all night, or in the hospital, but they had a hell of a good time getting there. If they didn’t come away with anything else, they had bragging rights, and that’s worth something.

Sure with a little research things might have gone more smoothly, but I fear that they would never have been attempted at all. That would be a shame. People like me would have no cultural heritage. We would never have learned that it really doesn’t matter how it all ends as long as you took the chance.

The joy is in the ride.

What does this have to do with adoption, you ask?

Absolutely nothing, but it has everything to do with reunion.