You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark Read Free Book Online Page B

stood alone in the lecture hall at the local college, feeling very small and insignificant. Rather like I imagine his wingwang to be.
    Three years ago, my book made it to the final five in a national humor-writing contest. Sedaris won. Did he remember the nervous but curiously nonsweating woman from his very own North Carolina who had tried to press that book into his bony little hand-claws just one short year ago?
    Oh, I’m sure not.
    Ditto another book a couple of years later. Oh? What’s
this? You really think Jon Stewart and his gazillion-member staff is more deserving? Well, go on with your bad self.
    This past summer, my most recent book made it to the top three in the category of Best Nonfiction Book of the Year in the South.
    But what’s this? Another Pulitzer winner beat the snot out of me to take that one? And, yes, I hate him just a little bit. Kidding! I’m sure he’s a delightful fellow and there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that, below the neck, he is covered entirely in scales.
    Oh, high road, you’re just so very overrated.

8
    Road Trip to Nuh-what-kah Rouses Suspicions
    N ebraska—that’s one of the rectangular states out west known for corn and, well, corn—has been in the news lately because its “safe haven” law, as written, allows people to drop off not just unwanted newborns, but even surly teenagers for someone else to take care of.
    All together now: “Suh-weet!”
    Things got so bad that Nebraska governor Dave (“Hiney man”) Heineman was forced to call a news conference in which he actually pleaded, “Please don’t bring your teenager to Nebraska.”
    One state is simply not equipped to handle that much sass, I guess. There is, after all, no Undersecretary of Attitude, or Department of Demanding Money While At the Same Time Screaming At You to Get Out of My Life.

    Who knew?
    Turns out that once the word leaked that the Nebraska safe haven law has a loophole the size of, well, Nebraska, parents from across the country tossed their unruly teens into the car, and took them for a long ride in the country, so to speak.
    While the governor and others have said they’d just love to take care of every one of the little cherubs, they, uh, have to wash their hair that night or something and have decided to change the law.
    But not in time to prevent parents from as far away as Florida and Georgia from dumping their teens at Nebraska’s finer hospital.
    I’m guessing those were some pretty tense road trips.
    Surly Teen (waking and stretching and removing iPod ear buds for the first time since approximately 2004): “So where did you say we were going?”
    Frazzled Parent: “Hmmmm? Oh, just for a nice long ride in the country. Where there is a huge meadow with a big barn and you can catch all the mice you need.”
    ST: “Whaaaa?”
    FP: “Oh, sorry, I was distracted. That’s what we did with the cat, but this is going to be much better than that. You’re going to live in Nebraska ! Isn’t that wonderful?”
    ST: “Nuh-what-kah?”
    FP ( nervously ): “You love corn, right?”

    Of course, these parents didn’t get to this point overnight. As the mama of a middle schooler, I can tell you it’s scary out there. The Princess is in seventh grade, you remember. The other day she was telling me about a fight on the playground between two eighth-grade boys.
    “Who are they?” I asked, looking around the school yard.
    “I don’t know ’em personally,” she said. “But I do know one of them has a beard. And a son.”
    Holy crap!
    Hard to believe that it wasn’t all that long ago that the biggest worry shared by teachers, parents, and students was whether or not the eggs warming under the light bulb in the kindergarten room’s incubator were going to hatch into fluffy yellow chicks before the kids left for spring break.
    A beard. And a son.
    This was right after a conversation with a friend whose kid goes to a middle school across town.
    It seems the dad was volunteering to