Shirley Ceasar  - No Charge - Lyrics

If you decide to read and listen know that there is no Womp only nostalgia 

So it’s not often that I veer off into Southern Gospel stylings, but Today’s song is based on yesterday’s events. I had an interesting Day with an Ultra High (The Panel Fucked In Park Slope and I submitted to SXSW has progressed a round. Get ready to Vote! next Monday). 

The only thing is that most of the day I had that feeling. The one where you feel like something is a dash off. The kind where you make sure your panties aren’t on inside out because something feels a few degrees askew. 

I mashed the feeling down and set off to get my hair did for the first time since I’ve been here in Boston. It was looking total Nobody loves me status so it was time. I plopped down in the chair of one of the most unintentonally hilarious African ladies I’ve ever met and got ready for her to make work of my hair. 

She had a soundtrack of Gospel hits going and as this song started playing it hit me, MAC Truck vs. Bicycle style. 

Today, August 3rd is my Grandmothers Birthday. 

I honestly had to do my damnedest not to cry, thankfully I could blame the perm for the fidgety, agitated dramatic cuntness that was broiling in me. 

It was my Ace Boon, Road (World) Travel, Ride or Die Chicks Birthday and I forgot.

I spent a full afternoon “Everybody Hurts” style because I couldn’t get out to visit her grave before I left NYC and now I was sat up at a salon forgetting her birthday and she made that damn song that I used to laugh at when she played it on Sunday come on while I was rocking a head full of the chemicals she rallied against me having any part in for 11 years.

Basically if you’ve ever enjoyed anything about me as a person, she’s the one to thank. You get the hand you are dealt as far as parents, but I know we chose each other more than she was an adult obligated to deal with me. 

The first playing of this song every Sunday without fail she would Jokingly yet dead serious say “I wish you would hand me a bill” after the little boy presented his mom with the charges she’d racked up. After that she’d take to warbling through the rest of the song and I’d work on the buckles on the church shoes purposely purchased a half size too big since I was destined to be “entirely too flipping tall” like all woman in my family. I have hours of stories about her, but that’s for another day.

I’ve heard that you don’t really grow up till you survive the lost of a parent or someone else major in your life..if that’s the case I had to grow up entirely too soon for my liking. 

Cut to 7 years later and I’m forgetting birthdays. I feel less awful about it today, putting in extra work and renewing the feeling that I’m meant to make big moves because as she used to say “When I get old I expect you to give me a Pina Colada budget for when I’m relaxing on the beach”.