Cairo, Georgia. It’s not pronounced like the city in Egypt. Cairo is pronounced like the syrup. And truthfully, locals say it more like “KAY-reh.”

“The O is silent,” a waitress in the diner tells me.

This is a small town if ever there was one. In the booth across from me, an old-timer says: “Cairo’s so small we don’t have a town drunk, so we all take turns.”

Cairo actually isn’t that small. You’re looking at 10,000 residents. Which is Manhattan compared to other places I’ve performed.

You’re looking at a guy who headlined in Hartford, Alabama. Three times. I played Hartford thrice.

And once, I performed in a township in Kentucky so small I got pulled over for using my turn signal. “You don’t use turn signals in this town, son,” the officer explained. “Everyone here already knows where you’re going.”

Tonight I perform in Cairo, inside Georgia’s oldest theater. The theater sits on North Broad Street. The Zebulon. The place was built by Ethel Blanton, in 1936. She named the place after her husband, Zeb.

People don’t name their kids Zeb anymore.

In downtown Cairo you’re one century backward on the timeline. The historic district is the old hub of the village. A place where a night on the town only takes eight minutes.

There’s the old train depot, built in 1880, which was stuccoed over and converted into the Cairo Police Station, once upon a time.

There’s the W.B. Roddenbery Building where cane syrup used to be produced. Cairo is nicknamed the “Syrup City.”

There’s the Citizens Bank (1908). The United States Post Office (1935), which looks just like it did when Roosevelt was calling the shots. The post office even has a mural depicting Roosevelt’s New Deal.

I pull into the theater parking space a few hours before showtime. The Zebulon has put my name on the marquee.

And I stare at that name for a little while. It’s stupid, I know. It’s just a name.

But you’re looking at a kid who failed fifth grade. I was a pitiful student. I was put into a remedial class when I was 10. The other kids called remedials “the stupid kids.”

There were three of us in the remedial class. I was the tallest. And the chubbiest. Each day, before lunch, a teacher would walk into our classroom and say, “I’m here for my remedial kids.”

Shoot me.

Whereupon all three remedials would follow her out of the room to the gallows. Other kids would giggle.

I freely admit, I wasn’t a particularly bright student. For years, I thought Taco Bell was a Mexican phone company. I once called someone to ask for their telephone number.

But remedial class did me no favors. It ruined my confidence. It made me dislike myself. The teacher told me I was going to dig ditches for a living. She said some kids just weren’t cut out to be super-smart. And I believed her.

But those days are gone now. Because when you arrive in the county seat of Grady County, to put on your little one-man show, the beautiful buildings around you, the old churches, the antique houses, they all remind you that life is richer than a would-be ditch digger ever thought it could be.

You are not that dumb kid anymore. No sir. After a lifetime of learning; after numerous hard lessons; after countless failures and triumphs; you are now, officially, a dumb adult.

Thank you, Cairo.