A Potential Disaster Averted!

My quest for personal liberty takes a strong turn.

This story is set in January of 1978.  I was thirty years old.  The story is "magical" in that it helped me break the spell of my insane interactions with Dagny.  It was the second time I had withstood her coercion or persuasion, the first time being just the month before.  

In the beginning of January, Dagny had called me up and asked me if she could come over.  I said O.K. and she came over and we sat in my living room and talked.  She invited me for dinner with her and Dee, at the end of January.  Then she told me about an upcoming concert of hers and said she wanted me to be the sign language interpreter.

"Oh no, Dagny.  I can't do that," I said.  "Interpreting a concert is very advanced.  It is way beyond my skills."  I said this truthfully, and with no doubt whatsoever.

And she said, "Evyn, I have more confidence in you than you have in yourself.  I want you to be the interpreter."

"Oh no!" I said, horrified.  This was a familiar dynamic.  I'd had this very dynamic with her so many times, but not involving sign language interpretation.  And this time, I had a clarity about the nature of the dynamic.

"Dagny," I said, "it is not a matter of confidence.  It is a matter of skill and training.  The Rudolph piece that you saw me do, I could do that because I could look up all the words I didn't know, and prepare it, and practice it."  I explained this referring to the little "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" piece I had done in sign language at her Christmas party the previous year,

"I'm an intermediate, or maybe an advanced beginner in sign language," I said.  "Interpreting a concert requires really advanced skills.  You need someone who is a certified interpreter.  First of all she'd have to interpret a dozen songs, and you talk in between your songs, and that calls for interpreting cold. And that is a very advanced skill.  You have to be trained to do that."  

"Evyn," she said, "I want you to interpret my concert.  I know you can do it.  I have more confidence in you that you have in yourself."

What!? I thought.  This is crazy!  I knew I couldn't buckle.

I said, "No, Dagny!"  But then I kept on explaining, as if I were talking with a reasonable person, which she was not, at that moment.

"I've practiced cold interpreting with the T.V., while watching the news, and I can get maybe one out of every eight or ten words."

"Evyn," she said, "I know you can do it.  I have confidence in you."

Wow!  I knew this was crazy.  She had talked me into being a concert producer with this same line prominent in her persuasion, but I could not let her persuade me into being a sign language interpreter for a concert.  

I kept explaining to her why it wouldn't work.  

"I'll just be standing there waiting for a word I know."

And she kept responding that she had more confidence in me than I had in myself.  This was crazy.  It would have been a complete disaster had I accepted.  She would have put on her publicity "sign language interpretation," and some deaf women would likely have shown up, and I would be up there completely unqualified for that situation.  I'd already had a succession of disasters, mini-disasters, and near disasters with me in the role of concert producer.  This was a variation on the same coercion. 

  But I had clarity of thought, at last, and I refused to buckle.  We were coming toward the end of our problematic relationship. That the word crazy had formulated for me was magical and empowering.  I did not buckle, and thus averted a disaster.

About Dagny, she could not differentiate where her imagination left off and reality began.  Also, she was not listening to me.  Also, she was completely outside her comfort zone on anything pertaining to disability or differences of ability.  She wanted me to be the interpreter because at least I was a familiar person, and she was outside her comfort zone in hiring the proper person.  Or maybe she just couldn't find some one suitable.  Or maybe she thought she could save money by using me instead of hiring a certified interpreter.

I don't know.  But good for me that I stood up successfully in this instance, because I have numerous similar stories, with Dagny, and with Jane, and someone else, in which I would make assertion after assertion, then fold, crumple like a cheap suit, with varying degrees of consequences.