Dear World: I Officially Plunged the Toilet of a Dollar General

Warning: the person you become in rural America is THIS GIRL

I officially plunged the toilet of a Dollar General.

I’m not sure if this means I’m improving as a human, or I am in very (very) steep decline.

Isn’t it funny, the person you become when you’re in a new place?

I, for one, would be hard-pressed to plunge a toilet in almost any other situation. Imagine the old me at The Connaught, in London’s Mayfair, giggling down caviar and and boiled radishes and things spelled with a silent “g” that I am obviously only pretending to know how to eat, when suddenly there is a back-up in the ladies' toilet. Do you think I’d rush to the rescue? Please, I’d be too busy trying to figure out how to fold my napkin.

But here in rural America, where I have bought this 1800s farmhouse in this tiny little town where I grew up—plunging the toilet in the local Dollar General is par for the course. This hot spot mecca of bobby pins, cheese curls, and off-brand body soaps is the cornerstone of every rural American town—and let me tell you what: you will get sucked in.

I had my reservations at first, snooty prig that I am, but let me tell you what: twice I have been saved by this oversized hellhole. For example, on St. Patty’s Day, when I scoured the earth for green food dye, you know who had it?

Dollar General.

And when you need Band-Aids because you’ve just sliced your finger open and it’s bleeding everywhere and you’re an ill-prepared adult with little to no life organizational skills, you know who has the big ones?

Dollar General.

So when you go into this fine establishment and you’re dodging boxes of pool floaties and diapers and gorilla glue, you don’t turn up your nose. You bend the knee.

Which is why I felt obligated, the day I asked for the large, weird, bacteria-infested bathroom key, to do my civic duty and plunge this toilet that so clearly needed plunging.

And, to my surprise and amusement, IT ACTUALLY WORKED.

I, Ash Ambirge, am now handy.

(And also washing my hands.)

***

Bought a baby lawnmower. It runs on batteries. I have never loved a tool so much.

I don’t know how to mow in a straight line, and I don’t know how to adjust the height, and I don’t know how to blow the trimmings into the bag, and I certainly don’t know if my triceps will comply with such rigorous demands, but that didn’t stop the words from spontaneously spilling out of my mouth:

"I’ll volunteer to mow the triangle in the center of town.”

What?

I don’t even know how to start the fucking thing.

It really is funny, the person you become in a new place.

***

There is a man who lives catty-corner from The Triangle That I Am Now Disastrously in Charge of Mowing. I have named this man “Nicotine Ned.”

Nicotine Ned smokes on his front porch every day at 8am, at 12pm, and again at 5pm, like clockwork. And every time I drive by, Nicotine Ned does not wave.

This is blasphemy in rural America.

I have begun to take it personally.

In my 20s, I used to live on the 18th floor of an apartment building in Santiago, Chile, and no one would ever say hello in the elevator. (Fine.)

And try going to Zurich and making friends—haha, DIE. ←The look you get.

We won’t even talk about France, because France.

And I certainly don’t expect a sprightly chat in the pubs in London (because you aren’t allowed to talk about anything except the weather in London, or risk decapitation).

I was okay with all of that. Really, I was!

But now, I expect more from people.

Now, I am a 39-year-old woman with a lawn mower.

***

There is a nail in the tire of the Jeep.

“Don’t worry!” the stone mason told me. “I’ll plug it for you.”

I was skeptical, of course, because I am skeptical of anything with nuts. But as I watched him do it, threading it into the tire like a needle, I realized something profound:

If boys can do it, well—???

We always think that men are innately handy, and men “know things,” and men are capable at fixing All The Big Stuff.

But, um….I don’t know if any of us thought of this yet, but maybe that’s because they’ve been practicing it all their life?

Maybe it’s not innate.

Maybe they are simply good at things because they practice them.

I am here, practicing.

***

“Come on up, we’re going to shoot a microwave!”

This is not something I want to practice.

I trudge up the hill to the neighbor’s house, anyway.

Not so much to observe the microwave, but to observe the people.

Partly the reason why I am different here, I decide, is because everything is different here.

***

My best friend from high school came over with her five-year-old son. We made DIY bird feeders using pinecones, peanut butter, and seed. It is the most wholesome thing I have ever done.

Then, we took our bikes and rode in circles around the same park she and I used to. She and I spent our entire childhood on bikes. I knew my bike better than I knew most people.

As we rode round and round in circles, I couldn’t help but think:

Isn’t it funny, the person you have always been?

***

Caught a mouse in the garage the other day. I don’t know that I need mousetraps in the garage, but Wesley the bug guy put them there. Remember him? I still can’t set a mouse trap, which makes me feel like a giant minge, because if I am plunging toilets, surely I can do this.

Nope.

So I see the mouse and it’s awful because I quickly discover it’s not a mouse.

It is a bird.

I have killed a bird.

I am the worst human ever.

***

There are strangers on my property. I watch them walk up to the landing where the old barn was. They run their hands along the rope I have hung, precisely to keep strangers off of it.

Don’t do it, I think. Doooooonnnn’t do ittttttt.

Sure shit, they do it.

They climb over the rope.

Being the kind of person that confronts other people takes practice, too. I quickly gauge my level of backbone. Do I really want to be the “get off my lawn” lady?

I can see they are just trying to get a closer look at my pond. But, the ground there isn’t stable; it’s a collapsed pile of barn rubble, buried underneath some material, sinking and pitted with holes.

The old me wouldn’t have had the nerve to say anything.

The new me, however—Farmhouse Ashley—has plenty.

“Hey guys,” I call from the porch. “Can you come back onto this side?”

For a moment, I feel the urge to explain; to justify; to rationalize why I would be such a hideous human being.

And then, suddenly, I feel a different feeling.

Authority.

It is nice, somehow, feeling like you have agency over your life.

This, perhaps, is what the farmhouse has taught me most: you can do Big Things, too.

***

Ran into my 92-year-old neighbor. “I’m up to page 95 of your book,” he tells me. “Oh yeah?” I say. “Do you still like me?” He thinks pensively for a moment, and then replies: “I guess you just never know what someone’s been through.”

Roger, too, can sense that I am not the same person I once was.

And yet, I’m exactly the same.

Where you are may change how you act—but not who you are.

When I am getting off a plane in Paris in a designer trench coat and glasses, I am bold and independent and fearless and free.

And yet, when I here in this tiny little no-name part of the world, plunging a toilet in a Dollar General, mowing grass I don’t know how to mow, waving enthusiastically to a man who never waves back, plugging tires, shooting microwaves, making bird feeders, biking in circles, catching birds and confronting strangers, I am simply discovering new ways to be bold and independent and fearless and free.

It all takes practice, this business of being alive.

And maybe everything is different everywhere, yes.

But maybe it’s those differences that give us the opportunity to be alive.