Nancy French - Go Ahead and Jump

 

 

I sat in the apartment of my fiancé, David, surrounded by all of his friends. David told me they wanted to get to know me, because we'd just recently gotten engaged. And so, I put on my prettiest dress and I held his hand as they began to ask me questions. One of them smiled politely and asked me how we met. Well, we'd met on the campus of a Christian college in Nashville. It was a fundamentalist college, so it had three admissions requirements, a 2.0 GPA, [audience laughter] and 19 ACT and baptism by immersion. [audience laughter] So, I qualified and attended but I didn't like it very much, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. 

 

One day, I was walking to class and I bumped into David. He was wearing a navy suit and he was carrying a briefcase. We stopped and chatted so long that I missed my next class. He told me that he had gone to the same Christian college, but had since graduated from Harvard Law School and had just moved back to Nashville. At the end of that conversation, he asked me out. Now, he did so by handing me a business card, which I thought was not cold and impersonal, but rather fancy. [audience laughter]

 

He was like no other men that I'd ever met. I grew up in a small town in Tennessee called Paris. And yes, we did have an Eiffel Tower. But in spite of its European name, it was full of pickup trucks filled with gun racks. I myself took my concealed carry permit class at church. [audience laughter] 

 

In seventh grade, my science teacher announced that he didn't want to teach science that year, and he replaced our science curriculum with hunter safety. [audience laughter] So, at the end of the year, we had a shooting contest at school, and I was the best shot in my seventh grade. [audience cheers and applause]

 

So, I was very popular with the guys, but the kind of guys that I knew, they wanted to go mudding and hunting. David was not like that at all. I said yes when he asked me out. It was wonderful. We would go out on dinners and have conversation, and we would watch artistic movies and analyze them late into the night. He invited me to meet his family. They were wonderful. And once we took a walk, and at the end of that walk, he asked me to marry him. 

 

Now, I could tell it was spontaneous, namely, because he did not have a ring, but I didn't hesitate. I have prayed more about finding a parking space at Walmart than I prayed about marrying this guy. But I said, “Sure, why not?” [audience laughter] But I had two conditions. Number one, I wanted to get married in Paris, the real Paris. Now, I had never been to France, but it loomed large in my mind. And number two, I wanted to live in New York City with a view of the Empire State Building. 

 

Now, I also had never been to New York, [audience laughter] but I had recently watched Sleepless in Seattle. [audience laughter] It sounded like the type of thing that a recent Harvard Law grad might expect in a future wife. I knew that he was smarter than me, and he outclassed me, and I was trying to pretend to be more sophisticated than I am and he bought it. 

 

So, back in Nashville, all of his friends listened attentively as I explained how we met, and started dating, and how hopefully we were going to get married in France, and move to New York and by the way, I was going to accomplish all of this by quitting college. One of his friends interrupted and said, “Wait, how long ago did all of this happen?” Now, I paused here, because I knew this might be a bone of contention. And I answered, “Three weeks.” [audience laughter] I heard someone whisper, “Three weeks?” And then, someone said, “So how old are you?” And I said, “20.” And he said, “It's very unusual for a 20-year-old to drop out of college and marry someone they just met. Maybe you should get a college degree first or premarital counseling.” [audience laughter] 

 

I searched the faces of all of his friends, looking for one ounce of approbation. I only saw incredulity. One person began to cry. [audience laughter] I squeezed David's hand and I answered them and I said, “I did not believe in premarital counseling. I believed in love.” They were very, very sad. [audience laughter] And then, one guy stood up and he goes, “There has to be more to this story. Are you pregnant?” [audience laughter] 

 

But I was not pregnant. I could tell they didn't understand the urgency. They thought we were nuts. My friends thought we were nuts. My mother, when she found out I was getting engaged, she said, “To the rank stranger?” Yet, three months later, we go to France, and we get married and we move to New York. I had an apartment that had a view of the Empire State Building if you crawled out on the fire escape and craned your neck. [audience laughter] 

 

We had defied everyone's counsel and we had done exactly what we wanted, and it was wonderful. And then, I began to notice things about my new husband. [audience laughter] Let's call them discrepancies. [audience laughter] When we were dating, we watched artistic films. When we were married, he preferred movies that had aliens and a high body count. When we were dating, he told me he hated sports. When we were married, he joined a fantasy baseball league. When we were dating, he seemed cool. When we were married, he told me he read Lord of the Rings every year and bragged about speaking Elvish. [audience laughter] 

 

Once we went out to dinner and he ordered coffee. He excused himself to go to the restroom, and the waiter asked me how David took his coffee and I realized with a sinking sensation that I had no idea who had I married and what had I done. My concern over this decision grew exponentially when he started working at the law firm. He would go in early in the morning and he wouldn't come home until past midnight and I wondered, “Hmm, is that really how law firms work?” 

 

And then, one day, the phone rang. And it was a woman with a deep, sultry voice. This was before we had caller ID. This was a landline. And she asked to speak to David. And I said that he wasn't home. And she hung up. I didn't think much of it until the next day, the phone rang again, and it was another woman and her voice was equally sultry, higher pitched, different lady. She asked to speak to David. And this time, he was home. 

 

And so, reluctantly, I handed my new husband the phone, and he walked out of the room and I followed him. I overheard him say, “I'm sorry, you have the wrong number.” The phone kept ringing. It rang at 3 o'clock that morning and at 4 o'clock in the middle of the night. And the next day, my answer machine was blinking red with messages like, “I had fun with you last night, David. Your lips tasted like butter.” 

 

Some people were angry when I told them that David wasn't at home. One lady burst into tears, and I said, “What is wrong?” And she goes, “I just want him to call me back. I just saw him last night.” But he was supposed to be at work last night, so I said, “Where did you see him?” And she said, “SoHo.” But his law firm was in midtown. And I said, “Are we sure we're talking about the same David? He's tall?” And she said, “Yeah, he wrote down your number on this napkin.” She read me the number and it was ours. 

 

I felt terrible. I knew that I had made this terrible mistake and I decided that I had to confront him. And so, that night, after midnight, he came home. He was exhausted from whatever he'd been doing. I had this list of women's names. I dropped him on his lap and I said, “You have missed some calls.” He looked over the list, he casually tossed it on the coffee table and he said, “Huh, I don't even know a Desiree.” And I said, “What's weird is that? Wrong numbers don't usually ask for you by name.” He shrugged it off like it was a conspicuous incident, not an indication that I had made the worst decision of my life. 

 

The phone kept ringing. But instead of hearing these sultry voices of the women on the other line, I only heard the unheeded warning of all of my friends and family not to get married quickly. It went on for three weeks. One day, a man called. He asked to speak to David. I said that I was sorry that he was at work. And he said, “At work? All work should go through me.” I didn't know how law firms allocated cases. So, I said, “I'm so sorry. I'll take a message. What is your name?” And he said, “How dare you ask me who I am? I have known David for years. The real question is, who are you?” 

 

I was embarrassed and ashamed, because the true answer to that question was I was a 20 year old who had watched too many romantic movies. But finally, I said, “I'm his wife.” And at that, he absolutely exploded at me. He said, “His wife? I didn't even know he was dating anyone.” And I said, “I'm sorry. We got married quickly. It was in France. We should have invited you.” [audience laughter] 

 

And then, I launched into a defense of getting married quickly, but with less enthusiasm than I'd managed to muster back in that Nashville apartment. And he said, “Okay, this is a huge problem. Do not answer the phone. Do not leave your house. Do not speak to anyone. I am coming right over.” And I said, “Okay.” And he goes, “But first, I have to ask you, are you pregnant?” And I said, “I'm not pregnant.” And he goes, “A little David Lee would really hurt our comeback. And I said, “David Lee?” And at this, he laughed at me. He started mocking me. He goes, “You don't even know him, do you?” Well, he had me there. I may not have known what he took in his coffee, but I did know his name, and his middle name was Austin. 

 

So, I said, “Are you calling for the Attorney David French?” And he said, “No, I'm calling for the singer David Lee Roth.” And I said, “David Lee Roth, the lead singer of Van Halen? The big hair, the spandex, the rock star?” And he goes, “Yeah, I've been his agent for years. And oh, I forgot. He changed his number. I must have called the wrong one.” [audience laughter] So, that's when I realized that we had David Lee Roth's old phone number [audience laughter] and he was still using it. [audience laughter] 

 

Apparently, he would go to bars in New York City and meet women that he had no intention of following up with. Those were the heartbroken women that were calling us for three weeks. We just happened to have his number. And it was a big, big almost marriage-inning coincidence. So, that night when David came home from work, David French the Attorney, [audience laughter] I explained what had happened, and we laughed. But I thought, how precarious love is that in the short amount of time that David Lee Roth transitioned from one phone number to the next, I began to doubt the man I loved. 

 

But our love turned out to be more robust than I ever could have imagined. It has thrived through hardship, and heartbreak and health scares, and it kept going through financial problems and unspeakable joys. I wasn't wrong to believe in love. In fact, I didn't believe in it enough. I was just a small-town girl who learned how to shoot guns at church and dropped out of college, because I wanted romance and roses. But what I got was a man who spoke Elvish, [audience laughter] but a man who has been by my side for the past 26 years. [audience cheers and applause]

 

I can tell you unequivocally that he takes hazelnut creamer in his coffee. And eventually, when someone asked me, “Are you pregnant?” I was able to say, “Yes.” David and I have three kids and a grandchild. That's why I'm so thankful that many years ago, I decided, in the immortal words of David Lee Roth, to go ahead and jump.