a) I'm moving back to Georgia on Wednesday.
b) Wednesday also happens to be my last day at the internship.
c) It's friggin' Christmas.
... so I'm going to post this and then That'll Be It For A While. As in, I probably won't be post for a week or two (or three) as I make the move back to Athens, college, and actually having a social life. Looking forward to all three of those. And not so much the same about leaving Birmingham.
... on second thought, I'll be posting something kinda a reminisce-y about the internship and Birmingham on the whole. Maybe not a whole heck of a lot, but just something pretentiously nostalgic and maudlin.
So, the story: there's a group that makes bikes for kids with disabilities. It's a cool idea, since what little kid doesn't love the idea of finally getting mobile? I think the excitement of a bike for a four-year-old is motivated by the same feelings a sixteen-year-old has for his first car. Anyway. It's a cool story, and the writer, Rakhia Nance, found a pretty cool angle to suit it.
This little guy has an unidentified mitochondrial disease that affects all the muscles in his body. He has practically no muscle control, none at all. He can't hold himself up, he can't lift his arms and legs, he can't even swallow on his own volition. I'm in awe of his parents. And these guys decided to build him a bike. It turned out more like a tricycle, but it'll allow him to sit up in the bike and be helped along by someone behind him.
Biggest thing I remember about this assignment: the kid was unabashedly attracted to blondes. A couple of the girls helping out at the foundation where they presented him with the bike were young attractive blondes, and every time one would walk by, he'd loll his head to the side to watch them, then give them this little grin. Mitochondrial disease or not, guy knows what he likes.
With grandma.
Just hangin' out, waitin' for my bike ...
Blonde alert.
With his mom.
The trike needed some adjustment when they first got him into it, but it wasn't bad for a first time.
I hope things work out with the little guy.
Okay, more later.
Catholics confuse me.
There are no book depositories or true grassy knolls in Homewood -- had there been, I would not have wanted to be this guy.
I might kinda like the darker one a little better, but I couldn't completely decide, so I figured I'd post both.
Until someone makes some kind of Harley Davidson-themed nativity scene, the above, a cast-iron piece from one of the local furnaces, Sloss, is perhaps the most badass nativity out there. Even if baby Jesus in his cradle sorta resembles a mortar and pestle.
Five points to anyone who can guess what it is.
_____
I had a helluva time with color correction on the photos I sent to the editors, but I figured I'd brush by the whole thing here with some black and white. In other words, I was lazy about this, shame on me. But come on, wasn't there enough color in the first two?
There's something about blatant and massive materialism that makes me squirm in a guilty, depressed fashion. I mean, I just felt my heart sink when I was in there, looking at all the toys, thinking about all the little kids who think they really, really, really want Tonka's new Plastic POS Dump Truck. Sigh, just thinking about it right now kind of gets me down. I know -- I'm a terrible American.
Since they're one of the last places to do layaway (by the by: it's getting harder and harder to pronounce that word in my head), they do a pretty brisk business. All the department heads get into it. They've got a full upstairs storage facility behind the office filled to the brim, and were having to reorganize their storage loft (first picture) when I got there.
Joy Smith was Christmas shopping for her little girls. And apparently, that game, prominently displayed in her hands, is going to be the "big gift" for her eldest daughter. And that picture, in which Joy and aforementioned game are the focal point, ran on the cover of the Money section last week. And I just ruined a Christmas surprise for a little girl.
