Our Hometown
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Greetings from Guam "Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life." Sorry about the little hiatus from this weekly column...but so much has happened lately that I just couldn't find the time to write the darn thing. I mean with K-Mart's hours being what they are - 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. - ya pretty much can't get anything done - unless you're a vampire. I'm up at 5 a.m., out of the house at six, a coffee stop at Winchel's and I'm at school around six-twenty...a full two hours and forty minutes before K-Mart even opens! I frolic about my day, stopping occasionally to spit out a historical fact or two. I read the paper and search it frantically for a K-Mart ad or better yet, an insert. And, once in a while, I may drift off and dream of all the good times I've had at K-Mart - especially in the Hair Care aisle. Finally, I bolt from school - like a runaway shopping cart in K-Mart's parking lot - around 3 p.m. I jump in my truck, turn on the Myk Powell Show on News Talk K-57 and head down to the Hagatna (formerly known as Agana) pool for swim practice. (You know why I love K-57 don't you? K-57...K-Mart? Get it? They got that K thing going. Coincidence? I think not!) This is when the excitement starts to build for me, because I pass right by K-Mart around 3:15 p.m. - and that is catching every bloody red light on the way...which seems to be a skill only I have mastered. So, I go by and there she is, sitting in all her glory with a circus-like atmosphere exploding all around her. Oh, the lure of the Big K. I get to the pool around 3:30, listen to Myk in the parking lot until about 3:40 and then head into the pool to dispense my swimming knowledge to the masses. (You know why I love the Myk Powell Show don't you? Myk....with three letters and Mart with four let....ummm it's because they got that...M thing going. Myk, Mart, K-57 and K-Mart, come on now, that's no coincidence, that's a message.) Quick, join a cult...just kidding. But you know, K-Mart has this shoppers club thing which is a lot of fun with little praying and no mandatory fees or mass suicide clauses. So, that might be something worth giving a look into. Okay, I leave the pool at about 6:40 p.m. and now I am giddy with gaiety as I head for the final obstacle that stands between me and her - my dogs, Nu Nu and Tasi. (Tasi, by the way, is the Chamorro word for ocean...always the dispenser of knowledge. You can take the fur off a dog but you can't take the teach out of the teacher....or something like that.) I arrive home at 6:55, play with the dogs, feed 'em, then debate my own dinner options: Eat here or at Little Caesar's...which is located inside K-Mart! (Insert Austin Powers accent now:) Yeah, baby - Yeah. I usually arrive at K-Mart at 7:45, which leaves me only three hours and fifteen minutes to talk with all my friends. Hey, don't get me wrong, I appreciate those three hours. It's just that...well, in a perfect world...oh, forget it. Who am I kidding? Live in the now, Jim! A 24-7 K-Mart just isn't going to happen. So, as the outlaw Josey Wales once said, 'I reckon so.' Then, there are the weekend hours...I'll let your imagination take over regarding my weekends at the Big K. They defy written description - yes, even from someone as talented and syndicated as myself. So, there you have it, the reason why I haven't been writing these articles. But thanks to K-MA (K-Mart Anonymous), I am getting the help I need. In some local news of interest, the Pacific Daily News ran a front page article about the negative image that has been plastered to Guam by the world's media - especially mainland media. All their articles about Guam have to deal with the fact that we have so many Brown Tree snakes here, that if you stretched them all from end to end, you could go around the earth 23 times and then on to Mars and Saturn, take a left at Saturn, go into that black hole, come out somewhere in the Snickers galaxy, back to the Milky Way galaxy, via the 3 Musketeers galaxy, and back to Guam. I mean, the fact is, I have been here for over two years and have only seen 74 Brown Tree snakes in my room - I mean, really. Then, there are the stories by my competitors at the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal who write about our social life. Basically, stating that the only thing people do on Guam is hang out at K-Mart on the weekends. Obviously, their journalist was only here on the weekend. There is nothing I hate more than shoddy journalism - and I know shoddy journalism. Hello, like K-Mart's closed during the week? Duh. Seriously, we do get a bad rap about these things - this evil stereotyping - but, you know what? It's okay by me, because there is a good side to this, and it is called 'Jim being selfish.' This place is a jewel in the Pacific and sometimes its nice to keep your jewels to yourself...or something like that. Guam is AWESOME and you should all come visit, spend lots of money...NOW. When you're out of money, please go quietly so as not to disturb all the Brown Tree snakes. But don't worry, you'll get to see a few..........hundred...........draped all over your plane as you takeoff. Hafa Adai Copyright © 1999 |
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