I didn’t want to get up this morning.  I needed just a few more minutes of sleep to finish my dream. It wasn’t a good dream, but those are the ones you really need to finish.  You need to bring them to a satisfying conclusion or you’re stuck with that leftover dread all day long.  I didn’t want a day filled with leftover dread.  I had a fresh batch waiting for me as it was. 

I had promised the girls I would take them on a shopping trip to Little Five Points, one of Atlanta’s more colorful neighborhoods.  Little Five, as the girls call it, is a hippie, eccentric, funky, artsy little district full of bizarre and wonderful shops and restaurants.

It was way beyond my brand of weird.

My girls were interested in Junkman’s Daughter and Psycho Sister’s on this trip…two of the funkiest of the funky.  Junkman’s doesn’t allow photos taken inside, but Psycho Sister’s actually begged me to take pictures and blog about them.  I was only too happy to comply.  It was a cool little place and much of my husband’s hard earned money was spent there. 

As the girls wandered the shops holding up costumes that rivaled the best of Halloween though the past century, I ran around taking pictures and tried not to make eye contact with the man strutting down the sidewalk wearing a giant pair of fairy wings.

I sort of felt like I was in the first twenty minutes of what would morph into the scariest zombie movie ever made.

My son has spent countless hours schooling me on what I would need to do to survive a zombie invasion, so I know I can’t outrun a zombie.  I can’t outrun the gray in my hair, how would I ever have a chance of escaping a zombie?  In fact, I would be lucky to get more than a few steps away.  I have been known to trip over imaginary obstacles.  My total lack of coordination is legendary.  I once managed to get my heel caught in a sidewalk grate at the exact same time I got the buttons on the cuff of my coat sleeves caught in the straps of my purse.  I floundered around like a fish in a net until someone felt sorry enough for me to untangle me from my self-imposed trap.  My only hope for survival is to plan ahead.

So standing in the center of Little Five Points in the middle of another scorcher of a day, I was studying the crowd for signs of infection…of the zombie sort. 

As an experiment in people watching it was amazing.  Junkman’s Daughter was one of those places where you could pass right by someone and not realize they had gone off until they took a bite out of your shoulder.

The man modeling peacock feather earrings in Psycho Sisters was, by his own admission, only twenty-three days away from the zombie apocalypse.  Lucky for him, he had some pretty nice earrings…we had to buy a pair.   

While we ate pizza at an outdoor café a man approached the table beside us panhandling for a cigarette, and I was pretty sure he was just one bite away from the undead. Best pizza I have eaten in ages, but I ate with trepidation as I waited for someone to run up behind me and stick a straw into my skull to suck out my brains.  

Somehow we survived the day.  I never felt more than a fleeting urge to run and I made it home with daylight hours to spare…all thanks to the careful planning and foresight instilled in me by my son over the course of several years. 

Many months ago, as we drove past an ill-planned neighborhood of single story houses planted in an open field with no safe cover anywhere to be seen, my son said something to me that I will never forget as long as I live.  He said, “When the zombies attack…those people are totally screwed.” 

So…maybe we fit in down in Little Five Points better than I originally thought.

Until the next time…I’ll be barricading the doors!