R and J in the USA

It just was so fun, our time in the Native America Gallery store in Athens, Georgia. And we didn’t expect it to be. Why would we? We expected it to be like any other store you wander into off the street. Roam around, check out the goods, maybe say a quick hello, maybe even exchange in a lovely conversation, then leave and move on to more wandering. This was a whole different animal. 

The level of raucousness, loud laughter, and chatting that fit inside this little clothing and jewelry store did not seem possible. Nor did it seem desirable to a proprietor attempting to keep any kind of quiet atmosphere for her shopping customers. Any attempt to maintain privacy or decorum was quickly dispelled as unnecessary, and we were loving every second of it. The early afternoon in the store could just as well have been 3:00 AM at a party at a good friend’s house, where any constraints of propriety or shyness had an entire evening of festivity to shrink away. 

Our time in this little shop in Athens, Georgia, reminded us of our friends in Eldon, Iowa, who had welcomed us into their outdoor drunken 0.5K costume party fun run complete with donuts and bacon. There were no drinks, bacon, or costumes here, and business was still being conducted. But there were every bit as many good times being had. 

The gorgeous clothing on the clearance rack outside the Native America Gallery caught Julie’s eye, and the turquoise boots with white embroidered stitching lured her all the way inside the store. The friendship, fun, and hilarity kept her there and turned our little visit to Athens from good to great. 

After a few minutes of fun with the store’s proprietor and her vibrant crew of employees, Julie exclaimed, “You all are like a living sitcom!” Julie imagined the bar at Cheers where the commercial establishment was just a setting for personalities to fill the space, with fun and silly quips bouncing back and forth against any and all walls. Having found fast friendships and light-hearted playfulness at our race the day before, we wondered if we were learning a bit about how Georgia does things, and we were loving it.

It all began when Julie was eyeing those beautiful turquoise boots. Jane, the proprietor, walked up and began commenting on how beautiful the boots are. It may have been good salesmanship, but it also happened to be true. She pointed to the brown version and said, “We just sold a pair of these the other day.” 

“Actually,” she continued, “the woman who bought them was a real nutjob,” Jane said with disarming openness. Julie and Ryan couldn’t help but crack a smile as Jane let loose with no filter. Soon, Julie realized, this wasn’t salesmanship. It was simply a woman who liked to hang out and chat, and she was ready to just let it rip. Julie was happy to participate.

”A nutjob?” Julie inquired with genuine curiosity, sensing that Jane had plenty of stories to tell.

”Oh, yeah. We got all kinds of folks coming in here and…yeah. She was wacky.”

”Wacky in what kind of way?” Julie didn’t want to know for gossip’s sake. She was just loving Jane’s vibe and readiness to let it all out. Jane continued on and did not disappoint. Her way of speaking with a perfect blend of genuine pain at the trials and tribulations of being alive and light-hearted jocularity about it all made whatever she said feel fun or hilarious. 

Jane was happy as a clam to get her encounter with the ‘nutjob’ off her chest.

”Oh, goodness, thanks for listening. I needed to vent!” she said with a glint in her eye and a smile on her face. Definitely not your standard sales routine.

She continued. “Well, you know, something happens to women, once we go through menopause, we get…” Jane was looking for the word. “We get mean!”

Jane’s face lit up with the revelation and held a combination of deep knowing and brand new discovery as she revealed this secret to us and to herself as the same time. Then the truer revelation hit her.

”No. we get angry!” You have never seen someone so happy to proclaim anger for an entire demographic. 

Ryan and Julie burst out laughing. It was all so genuine and playfully welcoming. 

Julie, Ryan, and Jane wandered together deeper into the store and Jane returned to her place behind the jewelry counter. Julie, still wearing the turquoise boots, had forgotten that she left her white sneakers behind. She was soon reminded of this when another customer almost tripped over them and inquired if there was a shoeless child else in the store. Julie has very small feet.

As the conversation barreled on it was clear nothing was off limits and no volume control was necessary. It was as if this “conducting business” thing was an afterthought to an opportunity to hang. It proved to be a good strategy. The more we chatted and laughed, the more new customers seemed to stroll into the store. Julie was so intoxicated by the good times of it all that she found herself getting over the “make a purchase” hump and handing over her credit card for the boots and a pair of earrings. At first glance, one may have wondered how Jane stays in business with so little attention given to tending to the customers and the sale. Before we left, we were convinced she was an actual genius, letting the beautiful merchandise and good times do all the work for her. Whether or not this is intentional, or just a natural side effect of her infectious zest, we do not know, nor do we care.

Nothing was off limits for Jane. She pointed joyfully at Julie’s smile and then over at one of her employees, Sarah. “Hey! You two belong to the same club!” She was referring to the gap between Julie’s two front teeth. Sarah was sporting the same look. 

“You two are totally on trend. That is so in right now,” Jane quipped with innocent glee. Julie laughed and looked at Sarah, also laughing. Despite her and Sarah’s laughter, Julie knew there were stories behind those tooth gaps, and those stories likely held some adolescent pain. 

“We didn’t do this to be on trend!” Julie laughed. 

Usually folks with a gap between their two front teeth have at least one significant life story related to it. The next few minutes consisted of Julie and Sarah each sharing theirs with the crowd. 

“When I was little,” Julie said, “I hated this gap! I wanted to have a clean, unspaced smile like everyone else so much! I couldn’t get braces, though, because the gaps in my teeth are simply because my teeth are so small, so they couldn’t be pushed together. I begged my parents to get veneers on my teeth. We went to the dentist and got them and I came out looking like Mr. Ed! It was like I had chiclets in my mouth!” Julie was laughing and everyone else was too.

As funny as it seems now, it was also a profound experience in Julie’s adolescent education on life and self-esteem. “Well, I was so mortified by my new Mr. Ed teeth that I refused to open my mouth. I wouldn’t talk or eat. My poor mother had to insist that the dentist make room for me in his schedule to get those teeth off of me so that I would open my mouth!” The room was filled with laughter. “I actually learned a huge life lesson after that. When I got those awful things off of me, I vowed to never try and change anything about myself again. I would pursue growth and development and being the best I could be at being me. There is no part of me that I would lament or compare to anyone else. I am what I am and who I am and that’s that. I would embrace everything about me, no matter what it was and no matter whether I liked it or not, or whether it was different or weird or what. So, that was pretty great! It’s thanks to this little gap in my teeth that I’ve gotten to live a life comfortable in my own weird little skin!” The crowd had a temporary shift of tone as the entertaining story took a slightly deeper dive.

Well, Jane wasn’t done with the laughter. She ran into the back of the store and emerged with a donkey puppet that had the same chiclet teeth. The pure glee with which Jane emerged with that donkey puppet was hilarious on its own and we all broke out in laughter. Laughter is a good place for pain to get out in the open.

Sarah followed with her own gap-tooth story. 

“One day, at school, a girl walked up to me with a nickel and asked if I was a vending machine!” She said it through laughter, but with a look of old agony under the surface slightly peaking through. “It was actually pretty traumatic,” she acknowledged as a mixture between hurt and purge surged on her face. The air was filled with a cathartic cocktail of pain and joy and laughter swirling around each other. 

“You should’ve taken her money and dispensed some kind of kickass line!” Julie said.

”Yeah!” Sarah responded, maybe even finding a little reframe for the memory as she realized the missed financial opportunity. 

Julie found herself fondly recalling the story of when her older sister, Jennie, had been a little girl with a tooth growing the wrong direction out of her gums. She came downstairs one morning before school wearing a sign that read, “See Caveman Tooth, 1 cent”. The best part was that she came home with 12 cents. She clearly knew there was an opportunity and that our ”flaws” are just part of the good stuff of what we have to offer this world!

This little interlude is but a snapshot of the twenty minutes of back and forth that unfolded with similar jocularity. From topics as far afield as the beauty of the Adirondacks and Letchworth State Park in Upstate New York (including how it is NOT the Grand Canyon of the East in our humble opinions), to what racism in Georgia looked like in the 1980’s, to “Springtime for Hitler” (from the musical The Producers), to southern sorority girls and what does and doesn’t count as real southern boots, we seemed to travel as many miles in that little store as in our whole trip combined. 

The conversation ended up on Julie’s musical, and Julie soaked up every nugget of enthusiastic interest Jane and Sarah had for it. We didn’t find out Jane’s name until they asked what the name of the musical was. When Julie said, “Janey’s War”, Jane and Sarah’s face lit up with excitement.

“Her name is Jane!” Sarah said.

“And I am definitely in a war!” Jane responded with that glint in her eye and what we had come to know as her characteristic no holds barred, unfiltered, full disclosure, and good humor manner. “Inside and outside!” She continued. 

Social media and blog websites were exchanged with bubbling enthusiasm. That’s when we found ANOTHER synchronicity. As described in our post about the camaraderie we found in a coffeehouse in Greensboro, NC, Julie had been asked by someone she met there if she was open to writing on contract. This came just thirty minutes after she had written a sentence in her journal saying that she wasn’t seeking writing gigs, but if they showed up, she’d be excited to go after them. Well, the rest of that journal entry was about her desire to pursue screenwriting. Over the course of the trip, Julie has generated a running list of over 35 movie, play, or TV script ideass, some of which she’s started to flesh out. In all of Julie’s life, she had never randomly happened upon a person pursuing screenwriting (except when studying theater during college, and that is not random enough to count, plus that was over twenty years ago). After Julie shared about her musical, Sarah shared about her screenwriting and how she had just won a contest for her screenplay (a horror comedy called Shear Terror about a woman that gets a bad haircut and comes back to the salon after hours to exact her revenge). Ryan and Julie agreed that this was a great premise, and a story that many would find cathartic. 

“Oh awesome!” We exclaimed in response. “Do you have a website? We’ll include it in our blog post.”

She didn’t have a website to offer us, but she was grateful for the offer. The look that came over her face was so sweet, so heartfelt, so endearing that we were still talking about it after we left the shop.

”I don’t know if it’s weird, but I’m still thinking about that look on Sarah’s face.” Ryan said later on in our walk. “She was just so sweet, so genuine.” Ryan continued to ponder.

”No. It’s not weird. It was really heartwarming,” Julie said. “And I get it. You do, too, actually. When you are a creative person and you create something, when anyone shows any interest in it, let alone, when anyone shows any encouragement or support, it hits you deep.”

Well, it seems we were all hit in the feels in our time in the gallery.

As we were getting ready to leave, Jane and Sarah were showering us with love. “You all are so much fun! You are so inspiring!” While we were grateful for the compliments, we were thinking that they are just feeling how fun THEY are. We were just receptive.

Jane’s business card for the gallery says, “Our wish is that you leave far richer than when you arrived.” Well, mission accomplished.

We were quite certain it was them that had turned this into such a good time. Though, in the end, we suppose, it does take all participants to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

How could we say it better than the theme song to Cheers?

“Making your way in the world today, takes everything you got. Taking a break from all your worries, sure does help a lot. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came.” We were certainly glad we came into this living, breathing sitcom. “You wanna go where people know, your troubles are all the same. You wanna go where everybody knows your name.” 

We were all strangers when we walked in, but we all knew each other’s names by the time we left. Thanks for the good times, Jane and Sarah!