Shell Shocked

I have lived in America long enough to learn one absolute rule: Americans will argue about everything. They argue about barbecue sauce. They argue about the weather. They argue about which truck brand can pull a heavier oak tree. In Tennessee, I once watched two men debate mayonnaise brands with the intensity of two samurais preparing for a duel at sunrise. So yesterday, when I entered a diner off the highway and saw complete, heavy silence, I prepared for battle. Every truck driver had removed his baseball cap. The TV in the corner was playing a message from a nephew. Men with beards down to their chests were quietly staring at their coffee cups. "Charlene," I whispered to the waitress, keeping my hand near my side. "Has a foreign king declared war upon the republic?" "No, honey," Charlene said, her voice shaking slightly as she wiped the counter with unusual slowness. "Aunt Dolly passed away. She went to rest on a bed of cotton." I did not know this Aunt Dolly. But as I listened, I learned this woman gave over two hundred million books to children with no castle of their own, wrote songs that healed entire valleys, and spent eighty years wearing fifty pounds of shiny rhinestones so that everyone else could feel joy. When a great feudal lord passes in Japan, the province weeps for forty days. Here, Charlene just put on a record called '9 to 5,' and fifteen grown men softly sang the chorus while staring at their hash browns. I stood up, bowed ninety degrees to the television screen, and recited my deepest respect for the Queen of Tennessee. Charlene gave me extra bacon and told me that Dolly would have liked my armor, though she would have probably glued glitter on the helmet.