Guide to Living, Laughing, & Loving

Where you talk about living, laughing, and loving, the whole thing is, what are you doing here if you’re not doing those things? We get older and we forget about the good stuff, don’t we? We forget how to live, how to laugh, and how to love. Living is not spending your entire life trying to make sure that everyone else is happy. [Audience cheers] Yeah, I’ll get a whoop-whoop on that if you like. Laughing—have you forgotten how good it feels? There are some people at your table who have; please teach them. There are some people in this room who’ve forgotten how to laugh. Thankfully, you’re here tonight because you’re trying to reestablish your relationship with laughter. And loving—who doesn’t like some of that? Who, if you don’t, I’ve got some secrets for you, child. Robin was talking about sex—well, let me tell you about sex. The only thing better than sex is that chocolate out there, [audience laughs] and that’s because you can have it anytime, in any place, okay? Because, well, you know the rest.

Living, I started my life as a little colored girl in the segregated South. Not something that we like to think about, but that was my life. And luckily for me, it was one that helped me understand the opportunities that we have in this life. Some people will say, “Oh, I feel so sorry for you…with the Ku Klux Klan chasing you every day,” I said, “only on Wednesday, but they call us first.” They didn’t want to catch too many of us; they didn’t have a big enough truck. I say, you know, there are bad things that happen every day. When I was a brand-new nurse, I thought I had arrived. I had my degree, I was a professional, I was out to save the world, but I had to do it with two and a half jobs. Salaries sucked, But they are a little better now but not much. Where are the administrators out here? You need to pay us more. Exactly. So when I was tired of working two and a half jobs, never seeing my son, never seeing my family, one night in the middle of a night shift in the burn unit, I got a call from a headhunter, a recruiter who said, “Are you tired of working two and a half jobs, Valda?” “Well,” I said, “have you been spying on me? Yes, I am quite tired actually.” He said, “Why don’t you come to work in Saudi Arabia?” I said, “What have you been drinking? You must be crazy. I’m from a small town in the South. You’re talking about going to Saudi Arabia. I haven’t even been to South Carolina yet. Come on now.” So, after a while, I thought about it, talked to my mom, talked to everyone important in my life, and they all said, “Well, you know, if you go, you’re going to die over there.” I said, “I’m going to die here pretty soon from working these two and a half jobs, baby.” And anytime I go somewhere in the Middle East or into war-torn Africa, people will say to me, “Valda, you’re gonna die over there.” And for the first time in my life, when I said I’m coming to Ohio, people say, “You’re gonna die up there. There are lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. [laughter] Whoa, child, I’m still looking for that little rhesus monkey, but scared of death in the middle of Ohio, okay.

But the whole idea was that living was that I could work hard every day and get my student loans paid off, or I could do something fun and exciting and make a good living. And I did that, so I went to Saudi Arabia. What do you think when you go to Saudi Arabia? What are some of the things you think about? What do you think about? Sand, come on now, what else? Heat, oh lord. See, I couldn’t go now in the middle of my thermonuclear events that I personally have. I would just blow up in the middle of the desert, but what else? What about women? Burqas? Well, they usually wear abayas there; the burqas are more likely to be in Afghanistan, but they will cover up. So, there are different names for the outfits, but guess what? They’re still hot, and they still cover you up. But I said, “You know, maybe it’d be okay.” So I went to Saudi Arabia. Number one, the people who told me about the place didn’t give me good information because I didn’t go to the desert; I went to the mountains. Who knew they had mountains in Saudi Arabia? You know, I don’t say anything about these news people who don’t tell you everything about the things and tell you what they want you to know. We all know about 140 degrees in the middle of the day, but we don’t know about the mountains, so I went to the mountains. They told me that it would be rough for women, that women don’t have any power, and I thought, “Well, that’s not going to work.” Even the Klan didn’t get that out of me, so I don’t know. So anyway, I went on over there, and when I got there, I’d been there for a while. I met some beautiful people, some amazing folks, and guess what? I found that people there, like people here, want a couple of things: they want to live, they want to laugh, they want to love, they want to make sure that their children have better lives than they have, and they want to be safe and secure.

But anyway, I was talking to one of the women because, you know, the whole attitude about women is that women don’t have any power. So I said to one of the women, after being there for two years, after feeling a little bit comfortable, she came up to me, actually, and she said, “Valda,” she said, “Sister, that’s what we were called.” And I thought, “Oh, you’re down like that too? Let me get my afro out.” You know what she said? “Sister,” she says, “into Islam,” which means, “Am I a Muslim?” And I said, “No. Why?” She says, “Because my husband is looking for a second wife, and I thought you would be a good candidate.” I didn’t see that one coming, y’all. I said, “A second wife? Well, I’m not feeling that exactly, because how can you stand that? Anyway, how can you stand the idea that you will be one of the number, you know, that your husband will be with that wife and then that wife and then that wife?” And she said, “Oh, hmm.” I said, “Yeah, I feel sorry for you. You can’t drive, you can’t keep your own money, you’re going to be one of a number of your husband’s women.” And she said, “You American women lie to yourselves about that number, you know, one, two, three of the women thing. Yours is just not legitimized like ours. Your husband is tipping around, and mine is just going in the front door.” I said, “Well, dang, you’re telling the truth. That’s why you guys don’t have divorce because you just do it upfront. I’m going to be with her on Monday; you on Wednesday, and her on Friday, okay, I got that. But what’s this? Why do you think I’ll have a strong son?” She says, “Well, ’cause you’re tall.” Um, she says, “and you have broad shoulders and childbearing hips.” And I said, “Yes, I do! But I can’t be in that game with you, girlfriend. You go ahead with it.” But we became great friends, and we got to talk about things and about living and how we lived differently, but that we lived well. So when I said to her, “Oh, you don’t have any independence, you don’t have a good life,” she says, “Well, I’m the one who feels sorry for you because I’m here, and I have a house, a driver, a nanny. I do not have to work. I’m wearing about 50 pounds of gold right now, and you are 10,000 miles away from home, alone, and working every day.” Well, dang, she was right again. So, it gives you some perspective about life. Here, I’m thinking her life isn’t too good, and she’s thinking that mine is pretty bad.

So sometimes you just have to stop and think about your life and what’s going on in your life, and think about what’s great about it, what’s great in your life, who’s great in your life, who makes you laugh, who makes you glad to get up every morning. If there isn’t someone in there, you need to find them. It doesn’t have to be a live, two-legged person; it could be a rhesus monkey looking for a home. [laughter]