Out of place

My survival philosophy here has been to simply go with the flow whenever I am someplace where I don't quite fit. I have enough of a comfort zone here that the slap back of the odd reality of this semi-Southern, conservative, proud-to-be-Red-Neck culture doesn't strike me too badly.

And then there are days like today.

My son had been invited to a birthday party of one of the newer boys on the block. There is another family, with two children, that moved down about 6 or 7 houses away. I thought attending the party would be a good way to get acquainted, since they made the effort to reach out to us.

The father seemed nice, a waiter at the most expensive restaurant in town and his mother seemed pleasant. The boy was 10, as were his friends, so my son didn't have anyone to play with. It surprised me at first that none of the other families had brought their kids over.

Then I met the mom, and her family and friends.

The elitist snob in me found them utterly appalling.

Smokers, obese with terrible eating habits, brash gutter mouths with terrible dye jobs and tight cheap skin-revealing clothing whose conversations revolved around complaints about their low-paying jobs, their children's schools and their favorite shopping places. I spied tons of junk - huge bins of toys and lots of tchotchkes - but few books or magazines. And forget about newspapers.

I tried to be nice and tried to chat with them, though I found it was safer to simply stick close to my kid and play with him (since all these older kids weren't playing with him).

The low-point of the party occurred after the cake had been cut and all the children were digging into the chocolate cake and ice cream.

One of the loudest, brashest moms in the room decided to address the birthday boy. She seemed to be grandmother to the youngest boy in the room (17 months) and I would estimate her age to be 48 or 50.

To the 10-year-old celebrant, she announced: "Wow, can you believe you're a century?"

I was so shocked I almost didn't believe what she had said.

She got a smart-aleck response from the boy. "No because I'm not."
"Oh?" she wondered.
"No, I'm a decade."
"Oh," she said, looking to one of her allies. "Smart kid."
She turned to him again. "Well, I was just teasing you that you were 25."

I was so appalled.

The boy shot back, "Um, no, a century is 100 years."
"Oh, so what is 25?"
"Quarter century."

Someone please explain to me how she made it to 50 without knowing a vocabulary word as basic as century. That she has apparently raised children and can claim grandchildren is what is even more disturbing to me.