Life never stops to amaze me. I go through phases, sometimes even long phases, thinking that I have seen it all, read it all, or heard it all, but occasionally something new manages to come out of nowhere and slaps me right across my self-assured face!
Up until a couple of weeks ago I would have sworn, hand on heart, that we, as a nation, have finally matured enough not to bother with petty social constructs and traditions. I would have sworn that the stereotypical ‘sindikajri’ behind the proverbial ‘persjani’ do not exist anymore. I was absolutely convinced that life keeps everyone so busy making a living and raising families, that no one has the time to bother with things that do not affect them directly. If someone had to tell me that a simple name change on a doorbell label would not have gone by unnoticed, I would have laughed in their face and called them silly!
But not only did it not go by unnoticed, but some good soul or souls took such offence that I changed the names on my doorbell label from Bezzina to Bezzina/Grima, that they wrote a three-page long letter to explain why we (Bezzina and Grima) will both be going to hell unless we change our ways and save ourselves.
Initially we took it to heart. We felt invaded and frustrated because whoever wrote the letter was not brave enough to sign it so we couldn’t tell them where to shove it and to mind their own friggin business. But after I posted the letter on Facebook (God bless that), we found out that the same letter was sent to various people around the island. This made us feel somewhat better, in the sense that we stopped feeling that we had been specifically picked out as freaks, but simply formed part of a whole lot of freaks that were being targeted in a soul-saving exercise by some religious coward.
The letter which can be viewed at www.alisonbezzina.com/catholic-coward-letter/ was meticulously written and came accompanied with six holy pictures stapled together. I’m sure that if someone had to analyse the person’s handwriting they would conclude that there’s some form of obsessive disorder going on but I digress. Not knowing why the label on the doorbell is showing two surnames, the authors of the letter tried to think of every possibility....or so they thought. The letter said – ‘....I do not want to know anything about you but if you’re an unmarried couple living together, or a separated couple living together, or perhaps two men or two women living together....then listen to what I have to say.....’ It did not occur to this nosey parker that in today’s world two people could get married in all the religious and catholic glory and the wife keeps her maiden surname. It did not even occur to this good soul that two family members with two different surnames could be sharing a house for practical reasons. Other people received the same letter because their letterbox (not doorbell) shows two surnames, so the dimwit did not even think that two neighbours could be sharing the same letter box - a common practice for people living in blocks of flats.
Anyway the point is that the reason why someone would have two surnames on their doorbell or letterbox should be absolutely irrelevant and unimportant to the rest of the world. And even if someone is honestly bothered with it, all they should feel that is in their right to do, is to pray for us wherever it is that they meet to pray, sing and clap, and to hope that their direct line to the Lord will save our souls from burning in hell. For someone to feel that they have the right to write such a heavy letter and not signing it, is filthy arrogance at its best! It is this sort of self-righteousness, cowardice, close-mindedness, hypocrisy and self-absorbed egocentric attitude that keeps pushing the number of church-goers down in the dumps.
That we still have people who call themselves Catholic going round on imaginary crusades trying to ‘convert’ imaginary sinners like us, is disgustingly unbelievable. What next? Will they be coming round to inspect our book shelves and burn the ones with substance? Will they point and shake their heads in repugnance at my three copies of the Da Vinci Code? And (shock horror) what will happen when they spot my collection of Ellen DeGeneres comedies?