Sunday, December 27, 2009

Smashed Potatoes


While trolling eBay for a queen size bedspread I do not need the search engine pulled up one of my favorite categories of all time "drag queens". The first time I discovered that the best evening dresses for a six foot tall blonde woman (me) could be found while enlisting the aid of people with names like "Hedda Lettuce" and "Candy Stripes" ironically occurred when I was looking for a dress to wear to a military ball and I wound-up in my first bidding war with a drag queen. I won by a quarter. I was inspired. Why hadn't I thought of this earlier?


Years later, Phyllis (from the fourth grade) phoned to remind me "we" were turning fifty. We needed an adventure to celebrate. We were inspired by a series of books I will call "The smashed Potato Queens Guide to Life". The author/cougar of the actual book by a COMPLETELY different name gets snippy if you use the actual name, because she and her new baby-lawyer husband have trademarked the name and blah, blah, blah, blah, because she has to be so careful because 'cause there are so many nuts out there -- like me -- who may use the name in vain (IE. criticise). Hereto for, I shall refer to the COMPLETELY fictional "Smashed Potato Queens" as the MPQ's. (Please note that I have been known to lie my ass off.) Every year in the fictional town of Jackson, Mississippi the MPQ's participate in a completely fictional (wink, wink) parade. Since it involved sequins, tiaras, MAJORETTE BOOTS (!), and highly inflated breasts, this seemed to be the sort of thing in which Miss Phyllis and I needed to involve ourselves. This parade had our names written all over it. So many things in life turn-out to be better in theory than in reality (Much like my first husband.) In short, the whole thing turned-out to be a drunken hillbilly-fest and Miss Phyllis and I were referred to as "debs" (Short for "debutantes" and highly derogatory in MPQ parlance) by the other MPQ's. Now I ask you: Outside of a beauty pageant, would real debs take shopping advice from drag queens?

The parade was a bust, but shopping for the event was spectacular. I miss it still. I got a huge tiara and crowned myself "Miss Diagnosed", with a royal sash and everything. When I scrolled onto "queen" this morning, I thought -- however briefly -- that maybe we should go back. I waxed wistfully over the shopping of yore. Then I was jarred to my senses when my inner deb yelled "Hell, no!" as she recalled a fictional drunken, middle-aged woman who ought to know better swinging from the rafters of a fictional Jackson dive. Looks like I've got a tiara, majorette boots and nowhere to go.

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