The OTHER Famous!

In general there are several topics I try to avoid on this blog, including my parents and the bishop, because who wants to read my griping? However, this story about my mother amused both Hardingfele and Anna Banana II so much that I figured at least Palm Tree Fan would also find it funny.

Around here October felt like November, but that's OK because then November felt like October. This left us all wondering what December would feel like (February? July?) but the surprising answer was: December. It's cold and there's already snow on the ground. The holidays bring things like beautiful lights, endless parties, and parents. My parents decided they really want to come visit me (perhaps because they de-vited me to Rooster for Thanksgiving), but they could not decide which of two dates to come. One date I was planning to go caroling with Ethel, and the other one I have a wedding to attend, so I suggested the first weekend of January, pointing out that it was also my birthday. Here's the thing: my parents have been hanging around a lot with this woman who has the same first name as I do (Famous), and they said, "We can't come then! Famous will be in town!" Now the other Famous is ALWAYS in town, except for some of this month, so I said that was really something that the other Famous was more important than their own daughter's birthday. But the icing on the cake was when I said why didn't they come up next weekend, when I'll be singing in the Messiah, and they said they already saw the other Famous sing in the Messiah AND she paid for them to go.

So my mother has been been calling me at least once, sometimes twice, a day to change her mind about which dates she is coming, and when I told her how funny Hardingfele thought it was about her going to the OTHER Famous's Messiah, she said, "I can't believe you're jealous of this woman!" and I replied, "I can't believe that you don't see the humor in this!" THEN she said, "Her Messiah was only an hour and a half away!" And here I had thought it was in Rooster - my goodness, if they're going to travel that far, you'd think they could go twice as far for their own daughter! But the other Famous is like the daughter they wished they'd had, since she gives them money and I don't.

When I was much younger and couldn't see the humor in such things, I was offended that Hoodoo Head was always going back and forth between me and a girl who was just like me, according to him. She did not have the same first name, but she liked all the same things I did and (according to him) thought the same way I did, and she was also a Capricorn. I always pictured her as a beautiful, willowy brunette, but then I saw a picture of her and she was also a short, plain blonde. But Hoodoo Head ended up marrying and then divorcing her, so logically if we were so similar, he would have divorced me too. Another bullet dodged, besides Ubi Caritas. Of course, UC and I were a lot closer to getting married; at one point he was reading a short book about planning your nuptial Mass (e.g., should you memorize your vows, repeat them after the priest, or just say, "I do"?) while I was reading a very deep theological book called Three to Get Married by Fulton Sheen. (EXCELLENT book!!) Of course he finished first and then kept pestering me about when we could swap books. (We had borrowed them both from the priest who probably would have married us.) So you can see why I am still single, besides the fact that I would really want "Welcome as the Dawn of Day" from Handel's Solomon sung at my wedding, and who can afford a first-class countertenor these days?

Truthfully, I never really would have married Hoodoo Head because he wouldn't even have wanted a nuptial Mass, being an atheist. So Handel would have been a moot point, because nobody has music when they just go to the Justice of the Peace.

Famous Hat