Ledlow makes a cultural connection

Girls Night Out at a local elementary school almost degenerated into a redneck rumble.

Daughter Addi was working the manicure booth when a tough-looking little customer came up and plopped down.

“Do you want me to paint your fingernails?” Addi asked.

The girl, who was half Addi’s height and age, stared back and gave a strange reply.

“I could beat you up,” she said in a slow, sure drawl.

Later, I discussed this weird confrontation with my good friend John Lyle Ledlow.

Ledlow told me another story that he said might have a cultural connection.

He was soaking up the sun this summer at a local municipal swimming pool when two women nearly got into a fistfight over a plastic lounge chair.

Apparently one of them had staked a claim on the chair by draping her towel across it.

But when she got out of the water to dry off, the other woman had removed her belongings and claimed the chair.

I tried not to picture this fleshy tug-of-war after learning that both women were rather large — and not large in a good way, Ledlow pointed out.

“And to make matters worse they were wearing itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, overworked bikinis,” he added.

The incidents involving the pint-sized girl and the plump bikini models turned on a light bulb for my friend.

Ledlow was born here but moved away before, as he put it, he could be corrupted. Then, as I put it, he saw the light and moved back.

“I finally get it!” said Ledlow. “I finally understand the thinking that drives this little hamlet.”

Our worldview, he continued in an exaggerated Southern accent, can be boiled down to this simple premise:

“I can whoop your ass!”

Slightly offended, I told Ledlow that these are my people and he’s out of line.

But Ledlow, who’s an accomplished debater, wouldn’t have it. My protests only fueled the fondness he held for his new theory.

For instance, he pointed out a new poll that shows gun ownership in Alabama is twice the national average.

“So if I can’t whoop your ass,” he said, “I can at least shoot it off.

“And what about cage fighting?” he continued. “Right down the road from the elementary school where a peanut threatened to beat up your daughter, right across the parking lot from where two women fought for the honor of sitting in a plastic lounge chair, ‘your people’ are paying good money to watch grown men beat each other senseless.”

By this time I’d had enough of his stupid theories.

“I know what you need, Ledlow.” I said. “And I know just the people to give it to you.”