Video: Things That Happened To My Mother, Part 2. Ill include the text below. Its tricky reading this outloud because a lot of the dialog is not attributed to the person saying a given line. There is one part where one character misinterprets the other and it is hard to convey, through intonation alone, that something else was meant. (To be more specific, I am not trying to make it seem as if my mother thought there was a New Brunswick in California. But the other person thinks that what she means.) In Robert Altman movies, theres a lot of overlapping dialog, which helps show that characters are misunderstanding each other. But with just one voice, you cant overlap, and with a text which doesnt say This characters about to take something the other character said out of context, more confusion than is intended results. Anyway, heres the text: Things That Happened To My Mother, Part 2: The Loyalty Oath. Sometime in the fifties, when my parents were newlyweds living in Boston, my mother was applying for a job. Perhaps, given the way she told me this, shed already obtained the job. Either way, at some point, a receptionist asked her to sign a Loyalty Oath. She was being asked to sign a piece of paper saying that she would never serve a foreign government. Or did the statement simply say I wont serve our enemies? Either way, my mother hated Joe McCarthy and, sniffing a chance to lose a chance at a good-paying job, said, Ill be damned if Ill sign that. Well, said Mrs. OFlaherty (for who else would fate throw in the path of my lapsed Baptist Atheist mother when she wanted to get a job?) Were certainly not at pains to hire someone with your attitude. Youve just gotten through telling me Im qualified for the job. Youve disqualified yourself in the eyes of the United States. If your eyes are the eyes of the United States, I suppose thats so. Well we have nothing more to discuss, then. I have something more to discuss, said my mother. This is not a government agency. There is no law saying I have to swear fealty to the United States in order to work here. Well I knew you werent from here. But you come here to work anyway. Here? my mother asked. You want our jobs, but you wont swear to uphold our freedoms, said Mrs. Fitzgibbon. (I called her Mrs. OFlaherty a few paragraphs ago, but Im thinking now my mother faced a Mrs. Sean Patrick Hallohan Seamus Fitzgibbon, Jr.) Did you read my application? my mother said. I saw it. Did you read it? I said I saw it, didnt I? Did you read the part that said I am a U.S. citizen? Citizen or not, said Mrs. ORiordan Hooligarrigle-Feeny, You bring your foreigners attitude to our country. Here my mother laughed. She laughed at this point whenever she told the story and she laughed at that point in the interview. She said: Do you know what country Im from? I dont need to know what country youre - Im from the United States! No, youre not. I was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And where were you raised? New Brunswick. Thats in Canada, said the receptionist. And California, said my mother. No, said Mrs. Kevin ODarby, RN. (I think my mother might have been applying as a speech therapist at a hospital, so the human paperweight she was dealing with may have been an RN.) New Brunswicks just in Canada. No, my mother said, I was raised in New Jersey and California and I was born in the state of New Jersey, in a place called New Brunswick. Your accent isnt American, said Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. I was born and raised in the United States. So what did they teach you in California, youre so hostile to the United States? They taught me that a Loyalty Oath goes against everything this country was built on. Anyway, she never signed and got a job somewhere else.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 23:16:39 +0000
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