Way Out in Butt Curse-Wording Egypt

Yeah, you read the title right. That’s what Google Maps is calling my current location. 

For full effect turn your radio to an unclaimed AM audio signal and listen to static noise at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

Kidding. Instead turn your Pandora station to “Country Hits of the 90’s” and listen to high-class artists such as Brooks & Dunn, John Michael Montgomery, or George Strait ramble on about ranches or manure or something like that for 19 1/2 straight hours because apparently those tunes are the only thing my radio antennae can pick up way out here in the boonies.

Honest to Morgan Freeman I don't know how my eyes are still open at this point in my life. I have driven 1641 miles over the course of five days.  My car sounds like it has asthma. I have taken more five-hour energy shots than a college freshman with A.D.D. during finals week. Seriously people, I'm running on fumes.

And here I sit at what appears to be a gas station in the middle of nowhere, wondering how these crazy people survive in places that can’t even afford stop signs.

Over the course of this overbearingly long road trip I have been to a slew of small towns that dot Utah’s landscape like cheap chocolate chip ice cream. I’m talking about places where the entire City Council goes to the same family reunion. Places where “totes” is just coming into season as a hip slang word to use among teenagers. Places that the chorus to the Cheers theme song fits perfectly, "Where everybody knows your name…"

For the life of me I cannot figure out how people survive in towns where the population has not broken triple digits. They are living in worlds within themselves. Places like these remind me of a 15-year-old German Shepherd taking a nap on your front porch on a hot summer day with the cliché mindset of, "Don't bother me, I'm in my own world right now. I’ll get to you when I’m good and ready to, so leave me alone.”

That’s how this part of the world feels like to me.

You small-town folks are crazy. Just walking into the gas station with a credit card I looked like I was going to be in some horror film where the cashier was going to rip off my arms off in a panic for freaking her out as a foreigner or something.  You should have seen the look she gave me when I pulled out my iPhone and tried to navigate home on Google Maps. “We don't get many cityfolk around here”, she jokingly said with a wry smile on her Children of the Corn face. Where am I, a Stephen King novel for crying out loud? Part of me feels like you're going to find my dead body in the middle of a field somewhere and my disappearance will be turned into a Lifetime Movie Network special.

On a side note, these people know waaaaay too much about each other. As Tracy Byrd said, “Everybody knows everybody. Everybody calls you friend." Great Odin’s Raven, I just quoted a country song on my blog as a natural instinct! I’ve been out here in the middle of nowhere way too long. At the rate I'm going you might as well buy me a new set of Wranglers, a cowboy hat, and tickets for the next rodeo that's how much this small town culture is taking over my life.

But seriously, these people know way too much about each other. Far worse than anyone could ever learn after Facebook stalking their secret crush for seven weekends straight. They have Facebook out here don’t they? I think they do. No, maybe not. I’m betting they’re just getting into the trendiness of Myspace at this point. After all, those girls did keep saying the word “Totes” to be cool.

Me: "Yeah, so this guy I was talking to a few towns back was talking about this guy named Gary... "

Crazy Cashier: “Oh yeah I know Gary. Short fella with a scruffy beard, drives a red F-150, used to date Shirley over on Maplewood, worked at McGrath’s for a few years changing tires, shot a 4-pointer last year, got a tattoo on his right pec of the state of Texas, watches Vampire Diaries reruns to kill time on the weekends, claimed 6 dependents instead of 4 on his 2010 taxes, has a mole on his left buttcheek…”

Me: “Uh… yeah… that Gary.”

I really don’t know how I’ve survived this road trip. And I say that in complete and total honesty. At the rate I’m going I’ll be dead before I get to the nearest highway. Seriously, why is this cashier staring at me like a possessed China doll? This post may be my last will and testament for all I know, and if it is, can someone please drive out to the middle of nowhere and find my decaying body in a beat up Nissan Rogue?

Here’s a hint, I’ll be close to Butt Curse-Wording Egypt.