The Dorks Take Atlanta

There are some great perks to living in a foreign (i.e. anything outside of Texas) city: you get to try new restaurants, meet new people and learn a whole new language (here we say “spaghetti bowl” rather than “mix master”).

But the absolute best part is that nobody knows who you are. In Dallas I ran the risk of running into people I knew anywhere I went: the grocery store, the mall, the liquor store. And, by the way, I HATE running into people. I don’t mind seeing people at parties or pre-arranged events where I KNOW I’m going to see them; I just don’t like getting caught off guard—gotta think of something clever to say, gotta think of a way to close the conversation, gotta remember their name.

Frank and I have both realized that since we don’t know anybody, we have no problem being total dorks. Like, the other day, I decided to walk to the dry cleaners. Before I left, though, I thought, “Wait a second. I’ll have to walk home carrying all this dry cleaning. I’ll probably have to hold it over my head because it’s so long.” Now, mind you, I didn’t care that it might be uncomfortable, I only cared about how it would look. I imagined myself walking down the street, holding the hanger high above my head with all the plastic bags draping down over me. Very foolish looking!

But then I thought, “Who cares? I don’t know anyone!” And it was a feeling of joy, of relief…of freedom. Not only did I wander the streets of my new city carrying dry cleaning but just yesterday I rode my bike (wait, it was Frank’s bike, a boy’s bike) to a produce stand and carried the fruit back in my Kinfolk bag. I started struggling as I climbed the hill by our house because the left side of my bike (Frank’s bike) was so heavy with all the fruit. I took out some of it and carried it in my other hand.



So there I was, slowly climbing this hill in my neighborhood with a Kinfolk bag on one side of a boy’s bike and plastic bags of various fruits hanging off the other AND I had my big ol’ helmet on and I thought, “Man, when did I become such a dweeb?” I mean, I was worse than Safety Dave!

Again, my thoughts turned to, “Who cares? I don’t know anyone!”

The only person I know is Frank and he is of equal dorkiness. In Dallas he refused to wear his cell phone on his belt. Now he proudly attaches that thing to his pants every morning. He even has a little case for it. Then yesterday he got a pedometer at work so he added that to his waist accessories. He said, “Now I’m putting so many things on my belt!” And I said, “Yep. You look like a dork,” and he busted out with our mantra, “Who cares? We don’t know anybody!”

So if you’ve tried to tell us about friends of yours in Atlanta that we HAVE to meet, I’m afraid to say, I don’t think it’s gonna happen. We value our anonymity too much. We can be whoever we want to be. Heck, we might even change our names. Besides, who would want to hang out with dorks like us anyway?