Everything is Simple

Whitney Houston

When I was younger, I spent an entire summer — 2-3 months — in Illinois. And, at that time, I was in love with Whitney.

I remember having my Grandpa rent The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale for me, as I was too young and he was too old to know any better. At the time, I guess I wasn’t familiar enough with life to fully comprehend Waiting to Exhale, but The Bodyguard seemed to present a fairly universal message.

But, the movie I was able to rent and re-rent every single day — might be the most rented video cassette in the history of Sherman, Illinois — was The Preacher’s Wife.

I shit you guys not, I watched The Preacher’s Wife at least twice a day — every single day. This is not an exaggeration.

Now, my grandpa — may his soul rest in peace — was born in Kentucky in the 1920s and lived in the Kentucky/Indiana/Illinois-area all of his life. He was an old Italian man who wasn’t well educated and sort of exemplified the stereotype of old and white in middle America. Yes, this is the same grandpa who bought me Gargoyles action figures and The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death album.

One day, I was sitting in the living room, watching The Preacher’s Wife, I don’t even remember what part of the movie it was on, but he comes walking down the hall, examines the television screen, looks at me and says, “You watchin’ that nigger movie, again?”

I looked at him, in digust, yelled something at him and took my favorite VHS tape to the back room, where I continued watching it and refused to speak to my grandfather for the rest of the day.

He came in, later that day, and apologized. He told me he was sorry and that he didn’t mean it the way I took it. I told him, in my infinite wisdom (I think I was 8?) that it didn’t matter and that he had to business saying that word, at all, because no one did.

Then, I made him watch the movie with me. He liked it.

But, yeah, Whitney Houston has always and will always mean a lot to me. When I received the e-mail on my BlackBerry, last night, I was kind of pissed that E! Online Breaking News couldn’t have broken the news to me a little easier.

</3 Where do broken hearts go?

But, as long as I have her music, my heart will always mend itself.