[dropcap]I[/dropcap] reckon I should toss a few pennies in the thunder pot in regards to that poor gal who became so offended when she saw some decoration with a stem of cotton at Hobby Lobby. Somehow, just by seeing cotton, she felt threatened and was reminded of a time hundreds of years ago when slaves had to pick cotton. She demanded that the cotton decoration be removed. I don’t know what Hobby Lobby did to placate this thin-skinned woman. Maybe they gave her a gift card so she can purchase a new pair of drawers that won’t chafe her butt. They’d have to be silk undies, though.
Okay, if she wants to protest the use of cotton, then I think she should go all in. She should boycott all things made of cotton. Gather all her clothes and linens made of southern-grown cotton and burn them in her front yard. I’m sure she can look stunning in polyester and rayon. And after her bath, instead of using soft cotton towels, she can dry off with a jumbo roll of paper towels.
No more cleaning out her ears with Q-tips. There’re lots of other items that will fit in the human ear, so she shouldn’t have trouble with accumulated ear wax. I personally like using my house key. It can get out the hard stuff, plus the wax is a good lubricant for your door locks.
I guess there are things we could do to help this gal out. Should we tear down the Cotton Bowl up in Dallas, or maybe just change its name to the Man-made Fiber Bowl?
How about poor ol’ Peter Cottontail? What do we do if we see him hopping down the bunny trail? His fuzzy tail could be viewed as being offensive, so I reckon we should toss Peter in a stew pot and replace him with Jubal the Jackass next Easter.
Do you suppose this gal gets offended every time she drives by a cotton field? By all means, if this upsets her, we should stop producing cotton. Or she can just avoid driving by a cotton field by moving her sorry carcass up to New York.
I wonder if this gal gets offended at the sight of a cigarette. Cotton may’ve been a big crop in the antebellum south, but there were slaves working in tobacco fields, too. Should stores pull all tobacco products off the shelf so some easily-offended person isn’t reminded of slavery?
Do you think this woman knows that slaves worked in sugar plantations? Corn fields? Rice paddies? Shouldn’t she stop eating these food products?
So, what do we do to keep this woman and other poor souls from getting offended at everything we do or grow down here in the south? We’ve already stopped whistling “Dixie”, furled our flag and allowed neutered government officials to tear down statues of Confederate heroes. What else can we do to make them happy? I have no idea, but I’ll tell y’all one cotton-pickin’ thing. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to toss out my denim jeans and start wearing polyester pants!
Look, folks, if y’all don’t like it down here, that interstate goes both ways. Turn your irritated butts around and head up north where there’re no cotton fields, Civil War monuments or towns named after Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson. If you need driving instructions, just ask any native Texan, but you should first clean out your ears with cotton so you’ll hear us better.
Clint Younts grew up listening to the wonders of cotton, as his dad spent many years working in the industry. He probably been known to pick a bit, too.
