Oh darn it
Tonight I am having dinner with a nun.
This is not something I have ever done before. And I'm a bit nervous. Besides being slightly concerned that I'm going to drill her as if we were speed dating, trying to mine information out of her over a period of several hours but with the intensity as if I had a series of flash cards and had to get the information down in 3 minutes before moving onto my next happless victim (something that I tend to do with people I'm fascinated in and about things I don't understand, like a little child, 'but why? But whyt?'), I have a mouth like a sailor and I'm blatantly going to say something heavily inappropriate.
Picture this: Comprehensive assemblies. Silence. Several hundred bored students sat on green plastic chairs. Various vaguely senior teachers speaking about something incredibly boring. But The MiniWebstress is sat desperately trying not to stand up and say something. Sing. Shout. Swear. Or all three (I'm sure I can manage that in one sentence).
Its like peering over the edge of a cliff, staring down into its tempting, drawing open space. In the same way I imagine 'what if?' with bridges and other situations that are blatantly not going to end prettily, I have a 'what if?' when there are large spaces of uncomfortable silence. I imagine faces aghast as I conclude a terrible anecdote, an offensive observation or something damn right obvious anyone would and should never, ever say.
It doesn't even have to be silences. Its the world of open possibilities, the realisation of how tentatively, how delicately, relations and situation are maintained. Its like walking through a spider's web, watching a situation collapse so swiftly and so absolutely in a matter of seconds, in a few nouns and verbs, in a sentence or two.
I sympathise with Tourette's sufferers, its like trying to keep a tick under control, trying to keep words submerged in my throat, kept well away from my vocal chords, pushed back up into my brain, told to stay there until they can behave or until I'm well clear of the situation when they seem to disperse happily by themselves anyway.
I have, over the years, put my foot in the great cavity of my mouth on numerous occasions. I have humiliated and embarrassed myself and others quite spectacularly. My boyfriend regularly utters the words 'now why the hell did you say that?'. I think; I realise; I feel like an idiot. It doesn't even always take someone else to point out my enormous painful blunder, I often realise as the words cascade effortlessly and excitedly out of my mouth.
It isn't just the inappropriateness of my chosen topics of various sentences that gets me into trouble. I have a problem with expletives.
It isn't just the odd slip up, the odd, swift, fast swear word that someone could accidentally thought I'd said something perfectly reasonable instead of committing a verbal offense. No.
When a swear word comes out of my mouth, it grabs onto another waiting on the tip of my tongue. Then another - they yank at the first letter of the next offensive uttering as they take the plunge until a whole ream fall out, eager to catch up with their predecessor, to be more insulting, more shocking, more abhorrent than the last.
And I'm going to dinner with a nun.
Tonight I am having dinner with a nun.
This is not something I have ever done before. And I'm a bit nervous. Besides being slightly concerned that I'm going to drill her as if we were speed dating, trying to mine information out of her over a period of several hours but with the intensity as if I had a series of flash cards and had to get the information down in 3 minutes before moving onto my next happless victim (something that I tend to do with people I'm fascinated in and about things I don't understand, like a little child, 'but why? But whyt?'), I have a mouth like a sailor and I'm blatantly going to say something heavily inappropriate.
Picture this: Comprehensive assemblies. Silence. Several hundred bored students sat on green plastic chairs. Various vaguely senior teachers speaking about something incredibly boring. But The MiniWebstress is sat desperately trying not to stand up and say something. Sing. Shout. Swear. Or all three (I'm sure I can manage that in one sentence).
Its like peering over the edge of a cliff, staring down into its tempting, drawing open space. In the same way I imagine 'what if?' with bridges and other situations that are blatantly not going to end prettily, I have a 'what if?' when there are large spaces of uncomfortable silence. I imagine faces aghast as I conclude a terrible anecdote, an offensive observation or something damn right obvious anyone would and should never, ever say.
It doesn't even have to be silences. Its the world of open possibilities, the realisation of how tentatively, how delicately, relations and situation are maintained. Its like walking through a spider's web, watching a situation collapse so swiftly and so absolutely in a matter of seconds, in a few nouns and verbs, in a sentence or two.
I sympathise with Tourette's sufferers, its like trying to keep a tick under control, trying to keep words submerged in my throat, kept well away from my vocal chords, pushed back up into my brain, told to stay there until they can behave or until I'm well clear of the situation when they seem to disperse happily by themselves anyway.
I have, over the years, put my foot in the great cavity of my mouth on numerous occasions. I have humiliated and embarrassed myself and others quite spectacularly. My boyfriend regularly utters the words 'now why the hell did you say that?'. I think; I realise; I feel like an idiot. It doesn't even always take someone else to point out my enormous painful blunder, I often realise as the words cascade effortlessly and excitedly out of my mouth.
It isn't just the inappropriateness of my chosen topics of various sentences that gets me into trouble. I have a problem with expletives.
It isn't just the odd slip up, the odd, swift, fast swear word that someone could accidentally thought I'd said something perfectly reasonable instead of committing a verbal offense. No.
When a swear word comes out of my mouth, it grabs onto another waiting on the tip of my tongue. Then another - they yank at the first letter of the next offensive uttering as they take the plunge until a whole ream fall out, eager to catch up with their predecessor, to be more insulting, more shocking, more abhorrent than the last.
And I'm going to dinner with a nun.
posted by thewebstress at Monday, March 13, 2006
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