setting the record straight

I love Justin Timberlake. I need to make that one fact very, very clear before I go any further.

I own every *NSYNC album, I had an entire wall of my room as a pre-pubescent teeny bopper covered with posters of Justin, J.C., Lance, Joey and Chris AND I have two of his solo albums and know all the words to every SNL song or sketch he's ever written, been in or contemplated on the toilet. I love him. I'd marry him. I'd have his beautiful Aryan babies.

But.

Justin Timberlake is not from Memphis.

Before you start throwing sharp objects and lighting your torches to storm the village, let me explain. Justin grew up in Millington. He went to E.E. Jeeter Elementary school. And after that, he was homeschooled. In Millington. Millington is about 35 minutes north of Memphis, far enough that I would hesitate to call it a suburb.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I did spend the greater part of my formative years in Bartlett, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis. My parents currently reside in Bartlett. However. I was born in a house on Tutwiler Avenue, I went to pre-school at the Union Avenue Church of Christ, I rang the bell in the Evergreen Presbyterian Church belltower with my brothers when we lived on Lyndale Street, across McLean from Snowden Elementary, where I went to kindergarten and first grade. My parents both graduated from Memphis State University, my mom works for Memphis City Schools and my dad works for the City of Memphis.

And my blood also tastes like barbeque sauce. I kid, I kid.

So yes, my folks do live in the burbs. I lived in the burbs. But I am a Memphian, born and bred, and I can tell you one thing with certainty -- if anyone else besides JT tried to be from Millington and pass it off as Memphis, we would not be having that shit for one hot second. We would've called shenanigans LONG ago. And I definitely get it. Like I said, I love JT just as much as the next red-blooded American woman, and I understand why we continue to claim him.

But the best part of all of this to me is not just that we wouldn't let someone of lesser celebrity status get away with it -- it's that I can think of several times in my life when I have been describing someone to another Memphian, used the phrase "She's from Millington," and had to say NO MORE because those three words summed the whole thing up. So maybe we decided that Justin shouldn't have to suffer that fate. Maybe it was conscious. We didn't want him to be from Millington (shudder) so we scooped him up and adopted him as our own.

And y'all know I love him, but that boy ain't from Memphis. But as long as he promises not to commit any sacrilege, like calling anything other than pork "barbeque" or remixing Al, Otis or Booker T, I guess we can keep him.


cheers,
elizabeth