Meet Her Majesty. Her friends call her ‘Her’, as in ‘I know Her!’. Her has been a professional hula hooper for four years now and sets up shop outside Honky Tonk Central on Nashville’s Broadway. She hoops almost every day in a variety of costumes, no two of which are ever alike. She has seventy different wigs and as many more permutations and combinations of clothes and garish make-up. She’s quite the personality.
Her can trace her ancestry back to the ‘Patriarch of Middle Tennessee’ and the ‘First Citizen’ of Nashville – one Jacqués Timothé Boucher, Sieur de Montrun. And with such a royal pedigree, it’s little wonder that Her took Majesty as her family name. A year-round hooper, she’s now hitting her busy season and with so many tourists in town, hopes to reap the rewards of doing something that little bit different and I wish Her well.
What I also wish is that I could get over my annoyance at the American tendency to refer to someone as HER when they’re sitting right there, not just within earshot, but in company! Use ‘she’ or ‘her’ in Ireland when referring to someone in company, you’d quickly be asked who she is – the cat’s mother? It grates on me and I need to either tune in my cluas bodhar (deaf ear) or just get over it. Sadly, I know my limitations. Her Majesty was on to something when she took that name… perhaps I could do the same: Her Murphy.
