I’ve done so since I was very young. There was this chunk of tile — one of a number of irregularly-shaped pieces embedded into the ground as stepping stones leading to the back steps of my grandparents’ house in Bennettsville — that I thought had special, mystical significance when I was a small boy. It was shaped just like South Carolina.
Our state not only has the most beautiful flag (even it if is a bit over-evoked these days), but it possesses the most perfect shape. In fact, I can’t think of any other state that has a shape that is even mildly appealing (and Florida, as we all know, looks like a flaccid you-know-what). Our triangle is made even more perfect by the fact that it is slightly irregular — it’s not a mathematical triangle, which would seem cold and abstract. It’s formed by the natural confluence of the Savannah River and the Atlantic coastline. Its third line is a sort of hat worn at a rakish angle.
I could get really mysterious and Dan Brownish and talk about the delta of Venus and such, but it’s just a perfect, natural shape, immediately appealing to the unjaded eye.
And even at my age, I still see it everywhere. Such as in this drop of water on the faucet in the upstairs restroom at ADCO. OK, it’s a bit stylized, and the top has a bit of a cowlick, but when God was designing the natural laws governing water’s surface tension, he obviously intended that someday, it would pull a seemingly random drop into something approximating the shape of his favorite state. And I was there when it happened. Because He made me to be the sort to pick up on stuff like that.
Related Posts
“Our state not only has the most beautiful flag, but it possesses the most perfect shape.”
Rectangle???
There’s an asphalt pothole patch in the road where I daily walk my dog. I wondered if I was the only one who noticed it’s SC shape.
I had an SC-shaped light-colored birthmark on my calf that’s sorta faded away.
I’m glad I’m not the only dork around these parts.
Brad, some of us are assuming you are having a “flashback” of sorts.
Our assumption does not square presently with your gainful employment, etc. Please have your pharmacist check your scripts, or discard that old LSD. (:
Trapezoid. But just try making Hawaiian Islands a recognizable shape, other than a spatter pattern.
Brad–maybe you need to titer down the coffee dose?
One of the two most beautiful state flags. Rhode Island’s is the other.
Long after the fact, I received this input from Gray Bostick, formerly of Bennettsville, re email:
‘I thought it especially interesting as I, too, seem to see South Carolina’s shape in the most unusual places: clouds, birthmarks, floor scuffs, even dents in cars! And with regard to the SC flag, which, as you assert, is indeed the best of the 50 states’, you also correctly note it has been “a bit over-evoked”. Well, since I was transferred from Cheraw, SC to Kingsport, TN last fall, I have been amazed at the number of palmetto/crescent window decals I see ON A DAILY BASIS on cars all over Tennessee and Virginia. They are everywhere! And I wonder why. Other relocated Sandlappers? Maybe. Perhaps that might even account for the majority. Or could it be that these are folks who visited our fine state, saw all the “Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places” of SC – maybe even got to spend a week or so down at “our” ocean – and, faced with a return to these hills, decided, “Hey, I want a part of this.” Or, better yet, “Hey, I want TO BE a part of this.” Could this simply be the result of, for lack of a better phrase, Palmetto Envy.’