Poor Nelly!

I had planned on getting up early this morning and going to the farmer’s market and having a quiet morning. But alas it was not to be, because I overslept by several hours due to lack of a good night’s sleep the night before.


Last night at 3:15am I heard a commotion in the parking lot of the church. It woke me up but it didn’t sound dangerous so I tried to go back to sleep. But soon I realized I had to get up and check out the scene: I heard women screeching and one of them said, ‘put away that knife!’ so I thought I’d better drag myself over to the window.

Well, the upshot of the deal is that either some guy was trying to rob another guy and these two women intervened, or it was just a drunken knife fight, but by the time I got to the window, somehow one of the women had gotten a face full of pepper spray and was flat out on the ground and the two would-be assailants had high-tailed it out of there to finish their scuffle in peace and quiet and a little privacy.


That left Miss Eggplant (wearing a shimmering purple eggplant dress) who was big and had wild big hair and a loud aggressive voice and a commanding personality, down on the ground rocking and screaming and barking orders at the poor stunned Miss Nelly, who was dressed in what I would swear was hooker garb except they were in the church parking lot so maybe it was just a dress- up evangelical occasion, flailing about gasping for air and in a lot of pepper-spray pain.

There were lots of bystanders trying to help, but Miss Eggplant was running the show. “KEEP BREATHING, NELLY!” she would scream and rock this woman until she must have been addled from the shaking. She forced Miss Nelly to take a hit from her asthma pipe or whatever those things are called—inhaler, that’s it—which then caused Miss Nelly to go totally unconscious or else slip into a fit, I’m not sure, because then Miss Eggplant was screaming, “She’s stopped Breathing! She’s going into Convulsions!” all the while bossing everyone around telling them to call 911, etc;


Pretty soon here came the fireman with their giant truck a-blazin’ lights and diesel fuel, and you could see they washed her face down and then told her she wasn’t having an asthma attack, it was just a little pepper spray and she was going to be all right.

They asked Miss Eggplant to let go of Nelly so they could check her over and Miss Eggplant refused. So they had to fix up Nelly while Eggy was screeching and bossing and commanding the show. At one point she said, “She is signing to you in sign language! It’s because that’s all she knows right now! She can’t talk because of the pepper spray!”

I don’t know, that just made me laugh. It would take a Miss Eggplant to interpret helpless waiving gestures as SIGN LANGUAGE.

I tell you what, I think it was her pepper spray, if you ask me. Nobody asked them any of those kinds of questions but I would bet money on it.

Poor Nelly! Here comes the cops and they took Eggy aside and I could rather hear her talking about a knife and some pepper spray and her asthma inhaler but just at that time a car came tearing up onto Capitol Avenue and out of the driver side jumped a GIANT GRIZZLY BEAR of a man dressed all in white like a plantation owner, or possibly a summer pimp, and it appears that he is married to poor Nelly, because he’s suddenly screaming and wailing, “How did this happen? How did this happen? My Wife! My Wife!” and yet he never got anywhere near her, he just stomped and paced around the giant parking lot Flinging his arms wide in those aggressive/fear gestures you see people do who are under extreme emotion and want you out of their body space.

The police told him to park his car properly, and he did, but then he came right back out again and started rampaging around the parking lot repeating, “how did this happen? How did this happen?”

Meanwhile, Miss Eggplant has told her tale to the cops, the fireman have bundled poor Nelly into the back of Eggy’s car and just LEFT her there, and they all gathered around at the far end of the parking lot and proceeded to laugh and exchange war stories. This went on for at least 15 minutes before they all departed, along with the cops. I wanted to call down to the cops at that point that they might want to try to rein in the emotional Giant Husband but I decided to just keep out of it.

So now, act III: We’ve got poor Nell passed out or just stunned and silent in the backseat of the car with nobody around to hold her or comfort her, we’ve got her husband flailing around violently and stomping up and down freaking out, we’ve got Miss Eggplant now trying to corral him by telling him to go to his wife and hold her.

He was having no part of that suggestion, though! He enacted quite a fierce drama for at least another 15 minutes until Miss Eggplant was able to prevail upon him to get in the back seat of her car and attend to his wife. He would go over to the car and look at her in the back seat and then fling himself away in sheer agony and stomp around the parking lot some more. It was so touching I wish I had a husband who would so thoroughly neglect me like that in a crisis!I just wished so heartily to hear the words, “WOE IS ME!!” come out of his tortured lips.

He finally decided he was going to drive off in his car, still saying “HOW did this HAPPEN???” but Miss Eggplant had determined otherwise. She dragged, cajoled, ordered, coerced and basically muscled the husband to get into her car so she could drive them all somewhere safe and sound.

So the dude gets into the front seat of the car! This will not do for Eggy! She DRAGS the husband by the arm OUT of the passenger seat and basically tries to fold him like a tortilla into her back seat.

Poor Nell, it seems, is sprawled out across the seat so there really isn’t room for the big giant Husband so they all start yelling at Nell to SHOVE OVER! MOVE OVER, NELL! And that poor half-sick, half-unconscious woman had to sit up and drag herself over in the seat so her husband could get in back with her.

There were two other church dudes there, small bit players who helped corral and contain the husband, and one of them offered to drive his car to their destination. But first we had to have the husband, still overcome by the reality of a maced spousal unit confronting him, get back OUT OF THE CAR and start pacing around and rampaging in the parking lot some more. Apparently his grief was too strong to be confined to the mere back seat of a car!

I was seriously praying for this to all end in a big Bang of dramatic Flair: perhaps the husband could throw himself down in front of the car and beg to be run over and put out of his misery? Perhaps he could start beating his head against the brick wall of the church until he bludgeoned himself unconscious? Perhaps Nell would snap out of it and pepper spray her husband to shut him up?


Finally, finally, the husband got into the back seat of the car, Miss Eggplant drove out of there and the extra dudes went in hubby’s car and all was quiet in the parking lot again.


And that was why I overslept because I sat up watching Live Theatre out my living room window on a Saturday night.