Riding the Turnip Truck

We have a lot of sayings in the South that don’t make much sense to me. “Ugly as homemade sin” for example. Now I know in context it means that someone (or something) is real ugly. It’s the “homemade sin” part I don’t understand. And since when is the plain term “ugly” (defined as: very unattractive or unpleasant to look at; offensive to the sense of beauty; displeasing in appearance) not enough? Why does “ugly” need comparisons? I digress. This is not my point… my point is just related by another common statement, “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” Translation: “I ain’t stupid.” Although I don’t understand the whole falling off the turnip truck connection to being an idiot, that saying goes through my head when I’m treated like one, which happened recently. Don’t you just love it when someone assumes that you’re as “dumb as a stick”? (Do I even need to touch that one?) Perhaps if I were more humble, such insults to my intelligence wouldn’t be so irritating. Ah, the curse of pride!
My most recent experience was last week when I was asked to give away a conference table we had in the office. I’m a fan of Craigslist, so I listed the table and chairs under the “free” category. Within fifteen minutes, I had received approximately 17 e-mails from people who wanted to come get the table. I responded to the first one, who agreed to come get it. I also took the time to send a quick response to the other 16 people, letting them know it was no longer available. Isn’t this when you’d let it go? Not one guy. He wanted to know if he was even close to getting it, then went on to tell me that he likes to get stuff for free on Craigslist and sell it cheap to people who need it. He said (and I quote), “I know there are some people on there who do it to make a profit. I just want to help people who need it.” Seriously? Well what a ministry… taking free stuff that people who need it could get, then turning around and selling it to them. Now, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. That sounds like a profit to me.