Myrtle Beach used to be a lot cooler, back before I'd ever been there. It seemed to be the summer beach destination for all my school friends. I attributed the fact that my family never went there to the fact that Myrtle Beach must be a very expensive place to spend time, which only made increased its reputation inside my mind. Now that I'm much older and wiser, I can't help but wonder if my parents never took us to Myrtle Beach because they knew the truth about it: it sucks. It's dirty and overcrowded, and in South Carolina, which means that there are lots of places with signs that feature the letter 'X' multiple times. "The Armpit of America" my sister calls it, but maybe she's just bitter about never getting to go there.
But let's go back to that more innocent time, when I still thought I was deprived for never having had the Myrtle Beach experience, whatever that was. The only reason I even knew Myrtle Beach was so popular was because of the stupid t-shirts. It seems like all the popular girls ( i.e. the cheerleaders) had shirts from the Hard Rock Cafe in Myrtle Beach. Not only had I never been to that South Carolina vacation destination, I'd never been to a Hard Rock Cafe. It's like my parents were trying to keep me from being popular. And while I had developed enough to realize that popularity was a silly and unfair game that has nothing to do with the real merit in people, it was still a game I wanted to win. Outwardly, I scorned Myrtle Beach and the Hard Rock Cafe, but inwardly, I just really wanted one of those t-shirts.
Over Christmas vacation during my sophomore year of high school, my parents took my sister and me to Australia. I don't know how much our readers know about Australia, but it's way more expensive than Myrtle Beach, even when you use Australian dollars, which are worth less. I got it in my head that I wanted a Hard Rock Cafe shirt from Sydney. We went to a lot of trouble to fulfill this wish of mine, first finding the restaurant in that giant and unfamiliar city, then walking in to buy the shirt and walking straight back out again, because we did not come all the way to Australia to eat hamburgers without beets on them. It was my way of giving in to the part of me who secretly thought the cheerleaders were cool but still appeasing the cynical side of me, who would not have been caught dead in a Myrtle Beach Hard Rock Cafe shirt. I was beating them at their own game by wearing one of their precious shirts, but from a far more exotic location. The score was now Sandra - 1, cheerleaders...like 50 billion or something. It was a cool shirt, and I felt redeemed. I did not achieve instant popularity, though, because being popular is not about being exotic or different, but exactly the same.
I got over my secret obsession with the Hard Rock Cafe and Myrtle Beach and developed the healthy level of disdain I have for each now. I still liked my Sydney shirt, but it wasn't the same without all my angst behind it. I also graduated high school and started a new life without cheerleaders.
My parents keep going on these exotic trips. My mother, remembering how we went to all the trouble in Australia to buy the Sydney shirt, brings me back Hard Rock Cafe shirts, first one from Beijing, then one from Jerusalem. I've never been sure how to tell Mama that my desire for a Hard Rock Cafe shirt had been mostly fueled by teenage envy. Eh, it doesn't matter, because they are still pretty cool shirts.
After I received the Jerusalem shirt, I smiled again at my poor, sweet mother trying so hard to bring me back a souvenir that I would like. Then I happened to look at the tag of the shirt. The brand was some generic t-shirt brand, whereas my other shirts had the Hard Rock logo on the tag, just to make sure that no one missed the fact that HELLO! THIS SHIRT CAME FROM THE HARD ROCK CAFE! Perhaps my mother was not as poor and sweet as I had originally thought, but rather conniving and sneaky. Upon a stern cross-examination, she broke down and revealed that she had bought the shirt from a vendor in the street.
Somehow, this fact revived the shirt for me. No longer was it a Jerusalem Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, it was a fakeHard Rock Cafe shirt from Jerusalem. Man, I bet nobody from my high school had one of those!
This morning, I decided to browse the Hard Rock Cafe website, because I occasionally do research to pad out these entries that are about essentially nothing. I looked at all the locations all over the world where one can eat the same cheeseburger next to the same memorabilia. I had a good chuckle at the comparison of the cafe's decor to the ancient grave mounds found in Bahrain. I wondered how many people in Bahrain listen to The Beatles and tried to come up with a clever analogy about Americanization. I found out something very interesting:
There is no Hard Rock Cafe in Jerusalem.
Hard Rock Cafe shirt from Myrtle Beach? Pshaw. I have a shirt from a Hard Rock Cafe that does not even exist. Take that, cheerleaders!
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