”Nancy’s...*sniffle*...dead!!”

6/4/99

I’m linked! John Bailey’s journal of a writing man. His was one of the first I read, besides my own, and the first on my list of daily-read journals. And now he’s linked to me, oh, yay!

I called my church to cancel the wedding date. Through all this flipping and flopping back and forth, I never canceled the church. I knew I wanted to wait for the whole thing to truly be over before losing the beautiful evening in the memorial flower garden. Who was I kidding? We might as well have the damn thing in a tense little office somewhere; everyone’s going to be tense, anyway.

The assistant pastor who answered the phone has known me since I was tiny. I expected the bustling, interested secretary, who’s also known me forever, but Howard answered and I choked up a bit. He’s so kind and, well, present. When you talk to Howard, you know he hears you.

I had planned out my little explanation in my head, all of it ready in my ‘it’s too bad, but it’s really fine! oh well’ voice. Ready for Janice, the secretary, to coo sympathetically. When I told Howard I’d need to cancel the date, I started to explain, and he said, in his wonderful, round, listening voice, “It’s okay. You have your reasons.” I started to make future-date excuses, and he dismissed it again, giving me permission to keep my wedding mine. He wanted no personal details. I love Howard. Why can’t everyone be like Howard?

I’m so tired of making excuses for my wedding. First, “Oh, it’s going to be small, that’s right, just friends and family, very quick....” I got the worst pity-looks. Like I was missing out on something, because I didn’t want a big wedding. God, I even had to make excuses for getting married, telling people that we’d score more money from the Air Force because of it. That was my own fault, for not wanting to just come out and say,

“John and I are getting married because we love each other.”

Ew. God. I’m deleting that before I upload this.

So now I’m making excuses for canceling the wedding. Blaming other people. Blaming the time constraint. I’m the one who canceled it. Me. I don’t want to get married yet. Got it? Just give me a teeny bit longer. Stop bugging me.

God, what a bitch-encounter. I’m sitting here, 3 in the afternoon, still in my pajamas, and someone’s honking the frigging car horn outside, blaring away, honk honk honk honk Long pause. Honk honk hooooonnnnk honk honk hoooonk. Pause. Honk--You get the picture. Then my doorbell rings. Ding! Ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding! Ding Ding Ding! Okay, okay, fuck.

I thought it was my neighbor, maybe the cat’s in the way of her car, or something. I ran up the stairs, pulled on a pair of pants and tucked in my flannel nightshirt. When I got to the door, there was nobody there, but the offending car was idling in the alley.

A large woman called from the car window, “Is Nancy home?”

me, friendly and puzzled: “Does she live in one of these apartments?”

“Yes!”

(more puzzled, but still friendly, I assure you,) “Umm...is it this one?”

Apparently my “puzzled” can be mistaken for “condescending,” because I was treated to an ebonic display of bossiness. “Look, I assed you a quession, jus’ answer it.”

(polite, but cold.) “I don’t know any Nancy, but I wish you would stop honking your horn.”

I only wish the neighbors had been home/out to see it. There’s no Nancy in our area.

Now, look. I don’t want anyone to think negative things about me because I just now ragged on this woman and her speech patterns. I accept the ebonics idea; it doesn’t hurt me, so I don’t hurt it. I do believe compositions for public school English classes should be written in proper public school English, but it’s not my business. I am not, in any way, racist. Not in any way. I see the whole ebonics thing as a pattern of speech, a sort of dialect, really, especially when I’m at the laundromat and I can’t understand what two women are saying. They know I can’t understand it. I have no desire to understand it, as I’m not an avid eavesdropper. My own life is too important (he he) for me to care what two women are saying about me in the laundromat.

Hmm, paranoid much? What makes me think they’re talking about me?

Whatever. I don’t care to be shouted at in any language.

Later

Now that I’ve cooled off a bit, I’m thinking of all these wonderful things I could have done to infuriate that woman. I should have told her I was Nancy. Of course, that would have had to happen before she got all pissy with me. Then the piss would have been my doing. I never instigate the piss in a pissy situation.