According to everyone I follow on Twitter, The Onion wrote about Charlotte* yesterday in an article about a man (a fictitious one, in case that needs to be said) who’s suddenly realized – to his horror! – that he is planting roots in the Queen City.
“Wait, hold on a second, am I…am I building a life for myself in Charlotte, North Carolina?” the story’s protagonist, Mike Collier, asks “as it suddenly dawned on him he’d recently renewed his membership at a gym in downtown Charlotte for another year. ‘No no no, this can’t be right. I’m not settling down and making a go of it in Charlotte. Am I?'”
Yes, I too read the article and spent most of yesterday curled up in a corner wondering why the hell I wasn’t in New York yet. After I picked myself up off the ground, fed my eight cats and took a shower – where, admittedly, I again crumbled to the ground and banged it several times with my fists, yelling WHY, GOD, WHY – I laughed. The Onion aptly described what some of us have felt, maybe for just a second, or maybe for years, about living in Charlotte. If you’ve never felt that way, congratulations! You’re not a pretentious jerk like the rest of us.
Read the article here. Try to laugh through the tears.
* If you or a friend is struggling with Charlotte’s reputation as a mediocre city, call The Onion and tell the editors they can suck it!
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2014.
