Rules for the Southern Rule Breaker Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Katherine Snow Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-858-3

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-859-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020901197

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  Illustrations by Alli Arnold

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

  For Melinda, my first storyteller

  The Rules

  (Table of Contents)

  1. Always Wear Sensible Shoes

  2. Children Require Age-Appropriate Entertainment

  3. Know Your Limitations

  4. Don’t Major in Journalism

  5. Don’t Move to Podunk

  6. Don’t Talk to Strangers

  7. Never Arrive at the Funeral Home Late

  8. Don’t Bring Your Problems to Work

  9. Send Your Kids to the Best School in Town

  10. No Autographs Please

  11. Family Secrets Aren’t Meant to Be Shared

  12. A Minute on the Lips, Forever on the Hips

  13. Your Children Always Come First

  14. Ice, Elevate, and Stay Off of It

  15. Don’t Move Without a Job

  16. Don’t Talk About Death to the Dying

  17. Sending Fan Mail is Tacky

  18. Never Get a Tattoo

  19. Miranda Lambert is Not a Licensed Therapist

  20. Snoopers Never Prosper

  21. Always Know Your Date’s Pedigree

  22. Never Let Them See Your Scars

  Foreword

  In this introduction, I’m supposed to write about the purpose and inspiration of this book. I’m supposed to tell you why you should spend $16.95 on it instead of buying another mojito at an expensive restaurant. But, as I’m supposedly a “rulebreaker,” I’m going to start with what this book is not.

  This book is not ten truths you need to know to live your best life. It’s not about coming to terms with divorce or the loss of a sibling. It’s not about the rewards of being a journalist. It’s not about nurturing your kids or the evils of helicopter parenting. It’s not a love letter to the South or hate mail to the North. It’s not an ode to divorced moms, happily married moms, working moms, stay-at-home moms, older moms, younger moms, organized moms, or moms who repeatedly try to use their car’s keyless entry remote to open the front door of their house.

  I have been all of those moms at various times over the past twenty-plus years. I can’t say I was any better at one stage than I was at another. I can say I tried my best at every stage. This book is an honest account of times when I may have pushed limits or made rash decisions. The title of each chapter is a “rule” I broke. I think these essays show that there can still be good outcomes when you don’t do what everybody expects you to do. I’m not advocating for irresponsible decisions or poor choices; I’m just saying that life is messy for all of us, and sometimes you can’t play by the rules.

  I promise I’m not self-absorbed. (Said the women who wrote a book about herself.) But friends, other writers, and bartenders (mostly bartenders) have told me I have an innate ability to see both the humor and the poignancy in many of life’s experiences.

  So, read what’s happened to me and think of the times when you broke the rules, intentionally or accidentally, and then let yourself off the hook. Stop being so hard on yourself. Leave that to your neighbor down the street. The one whose kids told you their mom said they can’t go barefooted all the time like you do because then their floors would be dirty, too.

  And remember, a lot of people have your back, so let them know when you need them and have their backs when they need you. That’s a rule you should never break.

  1. Always Wear Sensible Shoes

  Before I even crossed the finish line of the long maze of metal detectors, my feet were throbbing. As I ascended the stairs to the main floor of the White House, I clutched the railing with both hands to pull myself up. Every step created more intense pain. Twenty minutes into the media holiday party, I had to lean against a wall of the East Room, shifting my weight from one miserable foot to the other. Surrounded by high-profile media figures, centuries-old portraits of George and Martha Washington, and silver tureens erupting with shrimp and snow crab, all I could do was constantly scan the dozen or so little gold tables praying I’d find a place where I could take a load off.

  My black satin shoes were beautiful, but the heels were four-inch shards of glass, the intricate organza ruffle crossing my foot: barbed wire. A friend insisted I borrow them because they went so well with the black sweater with pleated organza sleeves I’d bought for the big night. I tried the ensemble on at her house the day before I left for Washington, D.C., and though it was the perfect pairing, I was wary of the high elevation.

  “Just take some Advil right before you go to the party. That’s what I always do,” Stephanie advised me. At the time I didn’t think of this as drugging oneself in the name of fashion. I only saw sheer genius.

  The Advil, however, didn’t do the trick. An epidural could not have lessened the severe pain from my toes to my spine as I hobbled through the most elegant night of my life.

  I couldn’t carry a drink, much less a conversation, because I needed complete focus and free hands for balance to stand upright. I didn’t get to try any of Dolly Madison’s orange pound cake or the silver dollar biscuits pricked with fork tines and filled with Virginia ham. Maternal instincts did briefly overcome the pain, and I managed to collect a stack of sugar cookies iced to look like First Dog Bo, complete with holly leaves on his red collar. I wrapped them in a napkin and stuffed them in my pocketbook to take home to my kids.

  I was at the White House Media Christmas Party with Adam, my husband at the time, who was the political editor for the Tampa Bay Times.

  About an hour into the evening, it was our allotted time to go to the Map Room and get a picture taken with the president and first lady. As we neared the front of the line a white-gloved Marine instructed: “You may call him Mr. President, and her, Mrs. Obama.”

  “Hello, Mr. President,” I said, and then turned to the first lady and added: “Merry Christmas, Michelle.” Oh yeah. I went there. I went right there. I mean, was I really expected to retain simple etiquette instructions for a whole thirty seconds? I acted like we were the oldest of friends getting together for the Secret Santa gift swap at the office. What’s up, Shelly? Hey FLOTUS, have you been naughty or nice?

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted out.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” she said as the photographer positioned my new bestie Michelle on the far left, then Adam, then me, then the president. Just as we smiled for our big moment, my left foot twisted, my knee gave way, I fell against the 44th president of the United States then headed backward.

&
nbsp; “Don’t worry. I got you,” Barack Obama said as he hoisted me back up.

  “I should not have worn these shoes,” I managed to say. “They’re a mile high. I borrowed them.”

  He leaned his tall frame over and gazed down at my feet.

  “Oh, those are great shoes,” he said, reassuringly.

  “I’m glad you wore them,” added the leader of the free world who sometimes doubled as my stylist.

  Adam had planned to ask Obama a quick question during our photo op about the infamous hug the president shared with Florida’s former governor Charlie Crist when he was visiting the Sunshine State to dole out stimulus money. Crist, who was a Republican at the time of the hug, ran against Marco Rubio for Senate and lost in the primary. He switched parties to become an Independent and lost again in the general election. His hug with Obama was used against him in ads and posters to symbolize a lack of conservative GOP values.

  I had caused such a commotion with the near fall that Adam just smiled for the camera and kept moving without asking the question.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, once I was steady on my feet. “Adam wanted to ask you if you feel bad about the hug with Charlie Crist.”

  “Adam,” he called after my red-faced husband. “I do feel bad. I’m sorry he lost, because he’s a great guy.”

  Adam would recount the incident later, saying the Secret Service then pulled out their Tasers to get me out of the Map Room. We returned to the East Room and I had the best story of the night to share with fellow reporters. They may have been regulars in the White House Press Corps, but had President Obama ever complimented their shoes? Had he ever saved their life? As we left the White House, I took off my heels and carried them as I walked barefooted into the frigid D.C. night telling my story yet again to someone else who heard I’d fallen on the president.

  Four years later, we were somehow invited back for another Obama holiday party. I wore sensible shoes with a ruby red dress. I called the first lady Mrs. Obama.

  “Oh, what a nice, festive dress,” the president commented as we posed for our photo. After the camera clicked, I started to ask him a question, but he’d already turned left to greet the next guest.

  2. Children Require Age- Appropriate Entertainment

  I’d never heard the words “ma’am” or “Molly” very often until I was the oldest attendee at the Okeechobee Music Festival in Central Florida a few years ago.

  “You need any help with that tent, ma’am?” the guy with a turquoise tattoo of a deer’s head and antlers blazoned across his chest asked as I struggled to build shelter out of some gray nylon and way too many plastic sticks.

  “Where’d you get your necklace, ma’am? I love it,” asked the girl selling peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that she’d apparently rubbed in the dirt and then jumped on five times.

  “Sure, go ahead, ma’am. It’s all good,” said the shower attendee when I asked if he could please just let me in for free after learning I had to walk two miles to the General Store to buy a $7 token for admission to his portable showers.

  As for Molly, that’s the nickname for methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a close cousin of Ecstasy, and the drug of choice at music festivals these days.

  “Hey, dude, did you score some Molly?” a clean-cut blond boy in a T-shirt that read “Good at Making Bad Choices” asked a guy wearing no shirt at all.

  “Who the hell even gave us that Molly last night?” I overheard a girl camping near our tent ask her friends.

  I didn’t go to the music festival three hours away in the middle of Florida by choice. The only thing my then-seventeen-year-old daughter Charlotte wanted for her birthday was to go to Okeechobee Fest with her friend Samantha. Me tagging along in my turquoise Lilly Pulitzer shift and tortoise shell readers certainly wasn’t part of her birthday fantasy, but nobody under eighteen was allowed admission without an adult.

  “What? Are you running for mom of the year?” a friend asked when I told her I was taking the girls to Okeechobee.

  “Or worst mom of the year,” a frenemy chimed in with a smile, revealing her overly whitened teeth.

  “Well, if you feel comfortable taking them, I think it’s great. I just know I couldn’t throw my daughter into all that at her age,” another mom said or, rather, judged.

  Enough with the judgment. I wasn’t taking Charlotte and Samantha to turn tricks by the swamp or cook meth in an abandoned shack. We were camping in the great outdoors, unplugging, bonding, and seeing some great musicians.

  The three-day lineup included Mumford and Sons, the Avett Brothers, Jason Isbell, the legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans, and Kendrick Lamar. After arriving Friday evening, an attendant reeking of pot inspected my Honda Pilot for drugs, and we followed a line of cars rolling across grassy fields until we finally pulled in next to a grove of queen palms and managed to put up a four-man tent on our allotted swath of dirt. Charlotte and Samantha headed out in their jean shorts and embroidered, bell-sleeved shirts to see a rapper called Lil Dicky while I went to Hall & Oates.

  “Sara Smile” made me smile. “Rich Girl” brought back memories of the twelve-year-old me listening to my transistor radio in my old tree house, hoping my mother wouldn’t overhear the lyrics “It’s a bitch girl.”

  Fast-forward thirty-six years and here’s what my seventeen-year-old daughter was hearing at the Lil Dicky show. I don’t have the rights to share the exact lyrics but one of his songs makes the point that he still hasn’t “been up inside” a certain girl “before,” but he really wants to have intercourse with the “whore.”

  Not only was my seventeen-year-old daughter listening to this, and plenty that was worse, I drove three hours and was peeing in the woods to enable her to hear it. As I fell asleep in the tent that first night, I tried to convince myself that liking music depicting wild behavior doesn’t mean you engage in wild behavior. At her age, I knew every line of Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” yet I definitely did not become Nikki.

  The next morning when the girls and I were using Neutrogena makeup wipes to clean off the dirt caked around our polished toe-nails, I thought of the advice those child psychiatrists on the Today show were always spewing about bringing up the tough topics.

  “So . . . a lot of wild people here. Did you see the girl wearing only Band-Aids over her nipples?”

  “That’s, like, ridiculous,” said Samantha.

  “It’s like, is a bikini really just too confining?” Charlotte added.

  “And some people are just clearly so out of their minds on drugs,” I said.

  “We saw a girl throwing up in the middle of a mosh pit and none of her friends were even paying any attention to her,” Samantha said.

  “She looked so miserable. This would be the worst place to be so sick. There are no bathrooms. Gross,” Charlotte said. “That made me never want to get that sick.”

  “You’d never want to get that sick at a music festival or anywhere?” I persisted.

  “Nowhere, Mom. Okay?” Charlotte said with a smile and roll of her brown eyes. “I mean, most of the people here aren’t totally drunk or messed up. It’s more about music than getting messed up.”

  She was right, and I felt better. I was glad the “dialogue was started,” to quote the experts.

  Lil Dicky would also redeem himself when he later became a spokesman for Trojan condoms and safe sex. Here’s what he had to say for guys who shun protection: “Let’s talk about the potential consequences of that ‘you got up in there raw’ sex. Texting your friends about it. Ejaculated inside of her fully satisfied. I hope you’re satisfied. How does it feel to go to work tomorrow with HIV?”

  Give ’em hell, Dicky.

  The second day of the festival, I was reading in the sun next to our tent when a neighboring camper, the one wondering where the hell that Molly came from, walked over to offer me a chicken and pesto wrap. It had been growing bacteria in the sun for hours and was the last thing I’d eat, and I’m someone who has eaten my f
air share of pizza crusts out of the trash the day after my kids’ sleepovers. But I didn’t want to dampen her effort at camaraderie.

  “That’s so nice of you. Sure. I think I’ll save it for dinner.”

  “It’s, like, ten bucks.”

  “Actually, no thanks. I hit the grilled cheese food truck pretty hard at lunch.”

  Stacey didn’t make a sale, but she still stayed to chat a bit. I learned she was in college in her native Maryland.

  “It’s my spring break so I’m here with some people I met at a music festival in Virginia last summer,” she said. “The best festivals have so much variety in music, so you get a big variety of people. You can walk through and it’s like listening to a radio station that’s changing everywhere you go. I love finding new bands and new people.”

  I complimented her pendant, a stone wrapped in wire, hanging around her neck.

  “It’s a caged crystal. I gave my mom one just like it for Christmas, so I always feel close to her whenever I wear it,” she said, clutching the jagged purple rock. “She’s, like, my hero.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I overheard my new friend back at her tent informing everyone: “If I don’t find drugs, drugs find me.”

  What would Stacey’s mom back in Maryland wearing the matching caged crystal do if she heard that? Ban music festivals? Quit paying her college tuition? Ship her off to rehab?

  Most of us moms just do the best we can, learning with each new situation along the way, making up the lyrics as we go.

  3. Know Your Limitations

  For two brief periods in my life, I was a competitive athlete. I thought I peaked in second grade when I ran the obstacle course faster than any other girl my age at J. W. York Elementary’s field day, but I experienced a physical renaissance in my late thirties and ran a 5K every month or so for almost a year. Maroon 5’s Songs About Jane album and the soundtrack from Chicago put Lance Armstrong’s steroids to shame as adrenaline raged through my mind and legs, enabling me to run a fourteen-minute mile.