Take the Country Out....

There's an old adage about how you can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl. Anyone remember that one?

Anyway, it means simply (for those who are unfamiliar with it and don't understand the meaning) that you can take a girl or young woman (or old lady too, for that matter I suppose) who has grown up in the country -sort of a farm girl, or like I was way back when, from a small town and a bit naive in the ways of the world -out of that environment but you can never take those roots -those country kind of ways -out of the girl.

I don't know if that is the truth or not, really I don't. Even though I have lived and worked in Washington, D.C. for a number of years as well as spending a year living and working in Baltimore too and should be a little bit "civilized" by those standards I suppose, I'm also pretty sure though that a lot of the things I learned growing up in this little village -kind of countrified by most standards -are still with me even after having lived and worked a good while in the big city.

But how come you never hear expression like that one about girls being applied to me?

Are they ever criticized for not dropping any of their country-type beginnings?

If my son is any example, I'd say that he definitely qualifies as a country lad, especially if the men's clothing he chooses were to be used as an example.

And, the job he has now -driving what is labeled as a "coal bucket" (an 18-wheeler hauling loads of coal mainly) and as dirty as he gets doing that job, he looks more like a chimney sweep than anything!

Sorry son, but you and I know it's the truth!

And even when he does get cleaned up (and he does clean up quite nicely, really he does), he then tends to opt for clothes that could be I guess called "Retro" in style! But then too, some of his shirt selections (that he likes to pick up at the Goodwill stores) I also know he gets some of them to wear when his older sister is around because she is one who definitely likes the yuppie or ivy league type of apparel for me. He wears the most Retro of his shirts just to watch her blood pressure rise as she lectures him then with words like "You've got to be kidding. You surely are NOT wearing something like THAT out in public, are you?"

And about that time, once he gets a rise out of her, out the door and away he goes, oblivious to fashion and style 99 percent of the time.

Definitely marches to his own drum roll, that boy does!