Married...with children!

Yesterday Lisa sent me a message asking about the origin of a name. When I got home I told her it was Moroccan. She laughingly says of course you would know that Tanika. I on the other hand thought it was common knowledge which just proves how unaware I am of things at times. She asked me what language they spoke in Morocco and I said French, Arabic and English (I forgot about Spanish until this morning). She wondered how in the world I know anything about Morocco and I casually dropped the bombshell that I had been engaged to a man from Morocco for about 2 months.

I hadn't realized that I never told her about that. You become so comfortable with your life that minor details like that slip your mind because you assume that if people know you then they know things like that about you. Anyway she mentioned it would be funny to put this in a blog post to mess with other people like I messed with her. However, like I told Lisa last night, I was actually engaged to this man for about 2 months, though it was unofficial until we had parental consent.

To give you a little history. I met him when I was 15 years old and he and a group of his friends were visiting the United States. I heard a group of guys trying to figure out how to get downtown and trying to get directions. The only problem was they didn't speak any English, they were speaking French. Of course with the eagerness of my budding language skills I offered my assistance and quickly hit it off with aforementioned fiance. They went downtown and I went shoe shopping with my mother. As I pondered the fate of the traveling Moroccans, I used my cunning intellect and my silver tongue to convince my mother we needed to go downtown to make sure these guys reached their destination. I wouldn't have felt right if they were lost in a strange city of non-French speaking people.

We found them downtown (after some serious searching on my part) and met up had dinner and some good times. I exchanged information with Mr. R (as I will refer to my ex-fiance) and over the course of the next year we corresponded spoke on the phone and he visited the U.S. twice to see me. I was a precocious teenager. Needless to say our relationship progressed to a point where the next logical step was marriage. At least for him. Realize I'm a 16 year old at this point just trying to enjoy myself. I refuse to tell you how old Mr. R is because I know you will only say "I knew it Tanika!" Anyway I knew the matter was becoming serious when he suggested our parents meet to discuss my dowry. To shorten this story, clearly we didn't get married, I'm still single. The problem was he wanted to get married then. I was going to have to stop school and move to Morocco. As you can tell my mom was pretty laid back about all this, but she was adamant that I was going to finish school first. There was also the religion issue. He wanted me to become a Muslim, but I didn't want to. My mom wouldn't give her consent so we would have to wait until I was 18. He didn't want to wait and shortly there after we stopped talking. I mean what else was there?

I always wondered what would have happened if my mom said yes and gave her consent. Would we have been able to work out our differences? Would I be married in Morocco speaking French with 15 million kids? I guess we'll never know.

Anyway, now you know a little bit more about me. I guess I'm not a guts spilling sort of person and even though something momentous happens, it gets relegated to the back of my mind to be replaced by more immediate issues.

As always have a good day and enjoy.

Long Time, No Post

I wanted to make sure I got a post in before August flew by at the same harrowing speed as May, June and July. It's been crazy down here in the CC since the beginning of last month. As the "summer" draws to a close (actually in LA it starts getting hotter at the end of August and September) the pace will only continue to quicken, so in light of that I've decided to start enjoying my free time more.

As an addendum to the last post and any other posts inspired by it, I've decided to start making positive efforts toward connecting with people (not necessarily everyone), sharing things I love with people who also love them as well, and getting out and enjoying my life just a little bit more.

Ok I know that was cheesy, but hey this is coming from a person who is afraid of soggy cereal so what do you expect? I've been taking the initiative more in my relationships with people. I realize that part of the problem is my own reticence and the other part is other people's. I was talking to a friend the other day who happens to have their birthday in the same week as my own (born in the same year) and we were saying that as we get older we realize how much of our lives have passed without truly enjoying them or living them, at least the way we want to live them.

To that end, I did something Friday night that I have never done before and it was great!! Sort of, I mean the hysterical screaming part wasn't that great but everything else was kinda cool. Oh yeah my legs are pretty sore as well, but I figure that's a small price to pay. That's just what happens when you are running from boiling hot lava I suppose. Then when the evening ended with a drunken brawl, I knew I was living life. Who wouldn't love frolicking on Venice Beach in the middle of the night?

Have a good day, and as always enjoy.