Getting me through my day

I foresee this to be the first of many posts about a gal named Shelton.

Shelton claims to be from Tennessee, and her accent is convincing, but really, I think she’s from another planet. She’s one of my favorite people on the ICE.

In the last three years she’s lived in five different states (Tennessee, Washington, New Mexico, Montana and Colorado), through-hiked the 2,160 mile Appalachian Trail, dropped out of college (multiple times), enrolled in culinary school, and accepted a cooking internship here in Antarctica.

Silly and goofy in the most endearing way possible, an ear-to-ear grin almost always decorates her face. She’s as skinny as a rail, with eyes that are wild and distant at the same time. Laughter seems to erupt from her entire body at the most unexpected times. You can’t help but smile and laugh along. One might look at her and say that she is pretty in the conventional sense, but it would more appropriate to say that she is beautiful in a most unconventional sense.

With her Southern drawl she’ll gives you the impression of being sweetly naive. Certainly she is sweet, but I also think she is more aware and perceptive then she lets on. What is probably most charming is that everything about her has a genuine fearless quality you’re only accustomed to seeing in children. Whatever the case, everyone around is happier for knowing Shelton.

For the first 2 weeks of her internship, Shelton is assigned to work as a DA. After that she will move to the kitchen and apprentice with production cooks and chefs. During one of our DA stretch-breaks, our entire crew is lying in the back dining room in peaceful silence. We are stretching our wrists, shoulders and backs to try and prevent the repetitive motion injuries that plague our crew. The light is dim, and with the breakfast rush over, all is quiet. Our peaceful stretching is unexpectedly disrupted with an outburst from Shelton…

“Last night at dinner, I saw the ma’anliest man I’ve ever seen.” The awkward pause that follows is long enough for the whole room to erupt in laughter… all of us looking at each other, thinking, “what?”

“ah-Ha’ ha-Ha',” she laughs along… mostly because the rest of us are cracking up, not really knowing what’s so funny.

“Seriously y’all. He’s really tall. He had a beard… didn’t any of y’all see him? He was really handsome… I talked to him.” She continues.

“I was real nervous. He was taking fried okra from the line, and I was like, ‘Wow! Do you like… okra?’ He told me he’s going to South Pole, and I was like, ‘Wow… cool… are you flyin’ there?’”

I look over at my friend Alison, another DA, and we’re laughing so hard that sound cannot escape our mouths. The only way to get to South Pole station is to fly there. Shelton shrugs, smiles innocently and laughs along with the rest of us.