Monday, September 19, 2011

Gimee's Writing


My brother Nathaniel and I decided to exchange REAL letters, as in, "putting pen to paper, paying for a stamp and placing it in the snail mail". Problem is, he had trouble decyphering my writing. I TOLD him he would and offered to type; he declined.


I should have mentioned to him the long list of other people who can't read my writing. Heck, my staff used to place bets on what I was saying in the notes I left them! College friend Don simply gives anything I've written to his wife, my good buddy Kathleen, to read to him and BFF Peri, after knowing me 40+ years, can't always determine what I'm saying. Even my Mr. B says, "I can USUALLY figure it out".


Once, when helping the Durham Symphany address envelopes for a mail campaign, one of the old grande Southern dames of the organization held up a stack of envelopes and announced to the room, "What IS this? WHOSE is this?" I pipped up and admitted it was my work. She said, "Did you grow up in a FOREIGN country?" I said, "No, I grew up in California", to which she replied, "My, my, my, how UNUSUAL!"


Oh, and the "Gimee" part? In 10th grade, I decided to change the spelling of my name from "Amy" to "Aimee". Apparently, my "A" resembled a "G" as first one, then another, English teacher referred to me as "Gimee". 30+ years later, one of those teachers STILL remembers he used to call me "Gimee".


Not much has changed in this regard; when I was switching our ADT account from NC to FL, the customer service guy said, "The name on the account is ATT B******? That's an odd name!" No, not "ATT" but "AH". And, so, the beat goes on!


I have no idea how my writing evolved to this "hieroglyphic" style, but, frankly, it's ME.


Mrs. "Gimee" B


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