Kyle Barnhart grew up in Panama City Beach, Florida: The Redneck Rivera of the Gulf Coast. He graduated from JR Arnold High School back in 2005 and immediately high-tailed it to Houston, Texas, to attend Rice University. He enjoys food and quantum mechanics and was the 2009-2010 co-editor of the Rice Thresher's Backpage. He has worked as a community development assistant at a local open educational resources web site, a web developer, IT computer-mover and freelance writer.
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I guess my biggest complaint about my friends back home is that they've all become MySpace people, and I'm a Facebook kinda guy.
Now let's put up some funny pictures I found while looking at said MySpaces today.
I can't be 100% sure about anything these days, but I'm pretty certain that's Matt holding up a tranny. And smiling big.
There are so many great things about coming home for Thanksgiving, the least of which certainly isn't the food. God, I ate so much food today. But sitting here in my room-- which my mom up and decided needed to be painted canary yellow for some deep-seated philosophical reason-- I realize what I am truly thankful for.
Two-ply, expensive, silky toilet paper.
It was the first real sign that I was home. After five hours in the air, a heaping plate of chicken Marcella in Pensacola that fell on a bed of pretzels and Mr. Pibb in my stomach, and a two-hour car ride home down I-10, I was ready to do my business. I'm not exactly the most exciting or sexy person to think about in the context pooping, so I'll try to spare you that little mental thought, unless you already had it in which case I apologize. Just replace me with Brad Pitt or something.
Anyways, I dropped by deuce and during the "we-all-do-it-because-we're-human" act of wiping, I noticed a feeling that had been foreign to my bum for over three months. It wasn't pleasure-- I mean, I wasn't getting any kicks out of it. It was more like relief. I suddenly realized I wasn't wiping my ass with the fine, one-ply slices of the sandpaper tree that Rice University stocks in every on-campus facility. My mind drifted to those commercials for toilet paper that I had always mocked before going to college.
"You know, toilet paper is toilet paper," I had always told myself. It didn't matter if it was the quilted kind or the brand infused with essential oils (essential oils are, of course, made of the souls of kittens and the skins of kidnapped fetuses). Then I went to college, whose bathrooms were honestly worse than the only other public bathroom that I had frequented up to that point: the Bay County School bathroom. And those weren't all that bad. Bay County School bathrooms were stocked with TP that was, at the very least, made of two sandwiched sheets of something.
I told my mom how thankful I am for good toilet paper today at the lunch table, relatives and her fiance and his daughter all gathered around. She thinks I'm losing my mind in college. And I am.
My past two nights have been sort of typical of life here in Panama City Beach after high school. There are people sitting around an apartment, playing Gamecube or watching HBO or the Real World. It's not exactly a whole lot different than what I do on any given night in Houston except, for some reason, it feels a whole lot more desperate and depraved here in Panama City Beach. Maybe it's the fact that the people in Houston are generally cleaner and smarter, and that little safety net makes me feel comfortable.
I went to a bar last night, 2 Le Monde, which was a seedy joint teeming with underage drinkers and run by a solitary, squat little Indian man. After getting over myself and how utterly ridiculous the situation was-- with all of the redneck scum and the tanned scenesters with the pierced eyebrows-- I gave in and helped kill a few pitchers of Amber Bach with Matt, Kevin, Steven, etc. All in all it was a good night and, if anything, was an exercise in enjoying myself in really not-me situations.
Every year, around this time, I bitch about how hopeless my friends are. Not all of them: just a few in particular. And they're still a little hopeless, but I'm just past making it a point of contention. The more I hear my friends talk about their plans, the more I realize that they're happy with the basics. All of their squandered potential aside, I'm definitely not in a position to be telling them how they can be happier. I'm jealous of the fact that they at least feel content in a world that constantly bugs the hell out of me.
I guess my biggest qualm is that some of them don't want to leave Panama City as much as they should. I think it's an awful thing to not see more of this big world while you still can. Backing that thought up with some sort of high-minded philosophical reasoning is pointless. It's just the way I feel. You only get one life to live, and I still think that you should make the most of it in a way that makes you happy.
So I'm sure everyone else is having a good holiday. Gobble gobble, motherfuckers.
