As she was thinking of revising her essay for a literary audience for a reading in Los Angeles, Darlene said,
“I’m not everybody’s cup of tea.”
As Darlene was listening to me describe how a venomous snake’s fangs worked to not only pierce skin or even clothing but to inject venom through long, hollow fangs directly into prey, she asked,
“Did God make snakes, you know — venomous snakes? Do you really think God did that?”
When a comment on our vlog turns into a doctoral thesis about how I totally misunderstood the Puritans, said commenter provides links to her blog on Puritanism, and Darlene says,
“She all into her whiteness.”
Darlene tried and tried to open a bottle of water and, frustrated, handed it to me. I told her it was already opened, and Darlene says,
“Oh, I was successful, but I didn’t know it. Which means I was not successful.”
When we are looking at at white supremacist comment on our new YouTube channel about our journey as an interracial couple, Darlene says
“It’s because these people even exist that we persist.”
In the car, I asked Darlene how she thought our marriage could improve, she said,
“If you drove better, our marriage would be a 10 on a scale of 1–10.”
Darlene reflects on her conversational vocabulary,
“They got me sounding completely American, saying ‘epic’ and ‘awesome.’
When planning how to title our upcoming vlog episodes, Darlene says,
“I don’t want to be click bait.”
When I say that Darlene played me a song as a litmus test to see if we’d get along when when got together, and I modify the story and say, “Maybe the song was played pre-get-together,” Darlene says of that particular song,
When faced with a tough situation and you need to make a decision, but it’s potentially painful, Darlene says,
“My view is go ahead and have the baby — no epidural — endure the pain, get the baby out and then start the process of recovery.”