Angie Kinghorn

The world ended. Blame Florida State.

For those of you out there who are not Clemson fans, I’m going to let you in on a not-so-little-secret. They’re passionate about football. Passionate in a college version of Packers fans kind of way.

I married into this strange cult of orange, so I am uniquely situated to report the events of yesterday.

News flash:  the world ended last night when Florida State absolutely killed Clemson, at home, in Death Valley, 51-14. We’re talking apocalypse. Grown men crying. Cats and dogs, living together (particularly apropos, as Bill Murray did the Gameday picks).

This was a huge game for Clemson. ESPN’s College Gameday was there, as was most of South Carolina and a good portion of North Carolina. Mark and a friend left here at noon for a game with an 8:22 kickoff. One of my friends was out there at 6:30 a.m.

As Mark so delicately put it when he got home from the game at 2:00 this morning, “They didn’t even bother to use Vaseline.”

I awoke to the sight of my dear husband curled up, covers pulled to his chin, face pale in a manner that usually signals dire illness.

“Honey! Are you sick? You look like you’ve got the flu!”

“I’m fine,” he muttered.

“Oh,” I said, relieved. “You realize it’s just football, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Five minutes later, he threw back the covers.

“That’s it. I can’t think about it any more. I’ve got to do something.”

Since then, he’s done laundry, pruned the Carolina jessamine with great vigor (really, I hope there’s some left), cleaned out his car, replaced the filters in the HVAC system, and made a trip to Home Depot.

I hope he mourns this much when I die.

The ebb and flow

The playground air is foggy with pollen and clouds of dust from the touch football game that is played every day, giving grass seed no hope of reaching for the sky. The kids’ white uniform shirts are uniformly smudged and dirty, and I can almost hear twenty mothers reminding themselves to add bleach to the grocery list.

My daughter runs up, delighted, flushed, and sweaty from digging for buried unicorn eggs. Dirt speckles her nose and blends with her freckles, giving me a glimpse of her face at sixteen. I hug her tight, inhale the earthy scent of her ponytail, and tell her, “I love you.”

Near the bars, my son is being either hugged or heimliched by a pigtailed blonde girl in a navy jumper. She lets go and he springs away into a game of tag.

My friend Susannah and I talk, easy conversation that flows along on the swirling currents of playground games and children’s shouts.

Then the words from the next bench drift down to us.

“I mean, what is twerking, anyway? I’m going to have to Google it.” She begins tapping on an iPhone, and before I mean to move, I’m on my feet.

“I know. I feel so out of it,” says another woman on the bench.

“Seriously? Y’all don’t know what twerking is?” It pops out of my mouth. No filter.

“No,” says the first woman. “I’m looking it up.”

“Don’t bother,” I say. “It’s basically just rump-shaking. Like this.” Then I bend, put my hands on my knees, and commence shaking it like a Polaroid picture. Or that milkshake that brings the boys to the yard. At any rate, my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps, they are a-jiggling.

“Oh. My. God,” she says, covering her mouth.

“I know,” I say, standing. “It’s pretty tacky. But that’s the tame version. If you’re Miley, you bend all the way over, like this.” I stretch my hands down, yoga-like, to my shins, and shake my buns. “Bonus points if you stick your tongue out.”

Standing up, I pause. “But her tongue is about the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. I just want her to roll the thing back up and stuff it.”

Reflecting later on their quickly hidden facial expressions, I think that perhaps this is why I have so few “appropriate” friends.

Eh. To hell with it. I find a mirror and work the twerk. The junk in my trunk is shaking, except these days I drive a minivan, and it doesn’t technically have a trunk, but that’s ok, because that means you can fit MORE junk in what isn’t technically the trunk. Then I burst into unexpected laughter at the girl in the mirror, for she is suddenly a girl, dancing as she did in the 90s in clubs with questionable music and ice luges.

Does anything ever really change?

Today, I’m In The Powder Room!

Today, you can find me at In The Powder Room, talking about my first time. Go on. Clickety click the link. You know you want to.

Read Me In the Powder Room!

Psst … You have lipstick on your teeth!

Excuse me. Ahem. This is so awkward. You have lipstick on your teeth!

You don’t? Well, you should. Trust me, you want lipstick on your teeth.

So as my friend Julie would say, get some!

 

You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth – Available NOW!

What the hell am I talking about? Your next must-read. An anthology of stories from the funniest, most poignant, incredible writers around, called “You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth.” (Yeah, somehow they included me. On page 215.)

 

Angie has lipstick on her teeth

 

My story is called “Dropping the Mask.” It’s about what happened when I stopped having being “fine” all the time and started speaking my mind. Shockingly, there have been some land mines.

Compiled and edited by Leslie Marinelli of The Bearded Iris and In the Powder Room, this book is for all of you ladies who’ve ever fretted over the unequal size of your breasts, the disgusting habits of your husbands, compared your lady bits to cruciferous vegetables, or bonded with your girlfriends over how little you paid for your blouse.

This book should probably come with a black box warning instructing you not to eat or drink while reading it. The dangers of choking are real. You’ve been warned.

So please get yourself over to Amazon and buy a copy (or ten!) of this anthology. You won’t regret it.

Check out this amazing group of authors:

Wendi Aarons, Keesha Beckford, Kim Bongiorno, Andrea C., Liz Dawes, Janie Emaus, Lady Estrogen, Suzanne Fleet, Amy Flory, Kim Forde, Rebecca Gallagher, Julie C. Gardner, Noa Gavin, Stephanie Giese, Allison Hart, Abby Heugel, Angie Kinghorn, Leslie Marinelli, Poppy Marler, Janel Mills, Lisa Newlin, Tarja Parssinen, Deborah Quinn, Alexandra Rosas, Kerry Rossow, Anna Sandler, Angela Shelton, Shari Simpson, Mere Smith, Meredith Spiedel, Julie Stamper, Suniverse, Bethany Thies, Dawn Weber, Robin Welling, Lori Wescott, Ellen Williams and Erin Dymowski, Tracy Winsolow, and Amy Wruble.