Daily Dialogue — December 13, 2013
Ramona Calvert: Hey honey, your momma called a while ago, she said she’d be home soon. You want me to tuck you in?
Bernice: (nods)
Ramona Calvert: How tight?
Bernice: Tight.
Ramona Calvert: (tucking in bedding) Okay…as snug as a bug in a rug. (beat) You’re so much like your momma, she used to live me to tuck her in real tight.
Bernice: I’m not like her. We’re different. It’s like we’re not even relatives.
Ramona Calvert: Ah well. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Relatives are trouble, I couldn’t agree more. Did I ever tell you about Walter, my brother? Huh? Well, what you have to go through with your mother, suffering, that’s what I had to suffer with Walter. One day we were playing out back, down by the river, and we came across the most beautiful anthill you ever saw. And then Walter, he immediately kicked it, and stomped on it, just, just, scattered it to the four winds, I just started howling. I was just, I yelled for my momma, I grabbed her and dragged her down there, just crying and carrying on, anyway my momma was trying to calm me down so she wait, wait, they’re not finished, not by a long shot. And we waited and waited, and sure enough, those little black things just started scurrying every which way, just workin’ hard to build their home back. And I said, why did they do it? I’d just give up, I mean, it’s hopeless. And my momma said, yeah, if it’s just one of you, but there’s lots of ants down there, and they’re all relatives, they’re family. Just like we are. Well, that’s what families are for. That’s why they invented family. So hopeless doesn’t get the last word. So listen if ants can do I figure we can do it. (laughs)
Bernice: (laughs)
Ramona Calvert: You know, my Birdie has a lot more strength than she’s ever known. One of these days she’s going to realize it.
— Hope Floats (1998), written by Steven Rogers
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is parental advice, suggested by David Proenza. Today’s suggestion by Femme_Mal.
Trivia: At the beginning of the film, when Birdee and Bernice are leaving Chicago to stay with her mother in Texas, the two are driving on a freeway. They pass a bus with a billboard on the side advertising for the television show Birdie was just dumped on. The billboard reads: “Toni: She’ll change your life!”
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Femme_Mal: “Another film in which parental advice is offered by a grandparent. Ramona Calvert must become aware her daughter Birdie is eavesdropping while she has a heart-to-heart with her granddaughter/Birdie’s daughter Bernice. It’s never quite clear when Ramona begins to address her comments to Birdie offscreen, but that last line is definitely for her daughter and not her granddaughter.”
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