i'm sorry, paul.
DISCLAIMER: i have no memory of this story. this is just a story that has been told to me SO MANY TIMES that quite frankly i’m not sure whether i remember bits of it or if i’ve just been incepted. so my grandparents used to have a house in jamaica (my grandparents lived… a very different life… than i live). for a while my nana started semi-permanently living there, and my mom was like, “you know what’s better than being in america??? BEING IN JAMAICA, YO MOM, WAIT UP,” and would spend long chunks of the year living there helping to take care of her. anyway, this story takes place in jamaica because my grandparents’ house was like… in a neighborhood near to (??? idk how vacation home neighborhoods are laid out) where paul mccartney’s vacation house was.
apparently ol’ paul used to go for runs every morning and like, EVERYONE IN ALL THE NEIGHBORHOODS would suddenly take up jogging
“oh hey paul, yeah we’re all just out here running in our Orthopedic Mom Sneakers ™, NO REASON, WE JUST LOOOOVE EXERCISE!!! FITNESS IS SO GREAT, ISN’T IT PAUL???? ISN’T IT?????”
and paul mccartney was like, “………….yeah, gotta …… love……..fitness……..”
(being famous is probably very weird.)
so one day my aunt deb had lil tiny!mollyhall out in the water, and i was CLINGING to her neck because tiny!mollyhall didn’t fuck around with the ocean. tiny!mollyhall was very skeptical of human beings putting themselves in the water.
“YO I’M ONLY LIKE TWO YEARS OLD BUT I AM ALREADY PRETTY SURE THAT WATER IS NOT THE HUMAN DOMAIN” - tiny!mollyhall, circa 1993
anyway, my aunt was hanging out in the ocean while my mother presumably tanned on the beach, and everybody was having a grand old time. absolutely nobody was doing anything foolish, like chasing poor paul mccartney while he tried to do normal, everyday human activities. so there we were, just hangin’ out, when suddenly PAUL MCCARTNEY swims/wades up from the sparkling blue water like a BEAUTIFUL BRITISH MERMAN and says to aunt deb, “hi! what a cute baby.” A FEW THINGS:
i was, in fact, an astoundingly cute baby.
my aunt deb was, and remains, a HELLA BABE.
nobody is ever prepared to meet paul mccartney. nobody manages to be graceful about it, nobody, i don’t care who you are. you’re lying. you had a panic attack and you peed yourself a little. it’s okay. you’re human. we’re all just human.
aunt deb was like, “…………..YES THIS IS MY CHILD THAT I BIRTHED, SHE IS MINE, MY PRECIOUS BABY.”
“does she know how to swim?” tiny!mollyhall apparently gave paul mccartney a VERY skeptical look.
“listen, motherfucker, none of you assholes can understand me bc i’m 2 and when i speak it sounds like a bunch of gerbils badly rapping the nicki minaj verse from monster, but you’d better HOPE you are not planning to put me in the ocean.” - tiny!mollyhall, probably
"no,” said my aunt deb. “do you want to get married haha just kidding not kidding i’m kidding i’m not kidding unless you’re kidding then i’m kidding haha just kidding.” “can i give her a lesson?” asked paul mccartney. “you can have her,” said my aunt deb. “she’s yours. she’s a present. it’s my honor to give you this baby. she’ll—she’s yours now. i also have this wallet, which you can have. and my jewelry. do you want the deed to my house???? you can have that. i wrote some poems when i was 15 about how the hiccups were a metaphor for wasted potential, do you—those are yours. i’ll send them to you. what’s your laundry situation? i can do it.”
my aunt deb didn’t say this. what she said was, “YEAH OF COURSE YES OKAY NO PROBLEM PAUL MCCARTNEY.”
“failing to keep our cool while meeting celebrities” is like, kind of a thing in my family.
my dad told me that once he wrote a really amazing song he was incredibly proud of, and like two days later he woke up and realized that the song he had written was just a slightly altered hey jude.
so she handed me off, and dear sweet nice mr paul mccartney was like, “hey there, cute baby. swimming is easy, and fun! splish, splash. swimming stuff.”
on a scale of one to “everybody has drowned,” how obvious is it that i have no idea how to teach people how to swim????
just assume paul mccartney did a better job of it than i have done just now.
apparently the whole time that this was happening, tiny!mollyhall was DEEPLY unhappy. apparently tiny!mollyhall was NOT impressed by the critical and commercial success of the beatles’ body of work, and didn’t understand why this COMPLETE STRANGER thought he got to just put her??? in the ocean?????
like if i wanted to learn how to swim, i would fire my family from being my own personal servants who carry me around everywhere????
if i wanted to learn how to swim, i would grow fins????
excuse me paul mccartney you may be one of the greatest musical artists of our time, but i am TWO YEARS OLD NOW, so i think i know a little better than you the exact percentage of water that my body should be in, which is 0%????
when it was all over, paul mccartney handed me back to aunt deb and then went back to doing whatever it is that people like paul mccartney do with their free time. my aunt deb and i looked at each other. “please don’t tell your mom i tried to give you to paul mccartney,” she said.*
*probably.