336. Pairings

“Do you think if you had it all to do over, that you would have gotten married?”

Uh, oh. C.W. was obviously playing one of his little tricks on me. I looked around to see who might be within earshot, and saw no one. “Sure,” I said, then I raised the volume a bit. “Absolutely.”

“To the same woman?” He had, by the way, assumed a new form he has grown fond of lately. He calls it “Leon the Neo-Liberal.” I can’t really describe it. Just imagine Johnny Depp playing Stephen King in a movie.

“Of course,” I said, nearly shouting. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” he said. He toyed with his wrist-phone, raised it to eye level, looked, and said, “Why do members of your species get married?”

We were sitting in the living room waiting for full light so we could take a walk. He came in as I was writing, and I had to quit to answer his questions. I thought long and hard before framing my answer to this one. “I don’t know,” I said. “Companionship?”

“Have you read what your Apostle Paul had to say about it, marriage that is?”

“He was against it, I think.”

“Pretty much so,” he said, “unless you were weak in spirit—lacked ‘moral fiber’ so to speak—and had found a woman you just had to …”

“I know the conditions,” I said. “It’s better to marry than to be tempted into immorality.”

“Quite so,” he said. “How long have you been married?”

“Forty-four years,” I said. “Why are you asking me all this?”

He ignored me. “Mrs. Big Dope says it seems like it’s been longer than that.”

I ignored his jibe. “You know what a joker she can be.”

“So why did you marry her? I mean how did you come to pick her? Did you do an internet search or something?”

“There was no internet then,” I said. “One scoured the bars, Sunday schools, and fast-foods hoping for the best.”

It's like they say, I suppose.
The grass isn't greener on the
other side. The grass is greener 
where you water it. - C.W.

“I heard that,” a sleepy voice boomed from the next room.

I turned to C.W. “Can we change the subject?”

“So why did she take you? I mean you obviously lacked moral fiber.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Was she desperate or something?”

I lowered my voice and moved closer to him. “Well,” I said, “she was past sixteen, the official age of spinsterhood in our state.” Then I raised my voice. “She could have had her choice of men,” I said, “but in her infinite wisdom and kindness, she saw something in me.”

It was his turn to think. “I wonder what it was,” he said.

“You wonder,” the voice from the next room said. “How do you think I feel?”

“I think I may be talking to the wrong person here,” he said. He rose and left the room. I heard him say, “Pardonnez-moi jeune fille. May I have a word?”

I just groaned and tried to go back to writing, but I had forgotten what I wanted to say.

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269. Anniversaries

I took C.W. for a ride yesterday to get him out of my wife’s hair. Given a chance, he can start to annoy her. This time, he found an old photo album of her high school days and, using a secret process he calls “enphasing,” began to appear in the form of one after another of her old classmates. Just imagine what might go wrong.

Let’s just say that it was good to get him out of the house. I told him to take on the form, more or less, of a typical person you might see at Walmart. His first attempt wasn’t too good. He appeared as an unkempt man with a belly extending nearly a foot over his belt, a backward NRA cap, and a sleeveless tank top revealing tattoos on both arms, one stating “The South Rools,” and the other “Remember Gettisbirg.”

“Whut?” he said when I shook my head in disapproval. “I’ll fit right in.” He picked at his nose. “Better’n you anyway. Remember the time you wore your ‘Support Our Public Schools’ tee-shirt and they asked you to leave?”

“Back,” I said. “Try again.”

“This time he looked quite a bit like an old Navy buddy from a photo of the two of us after we had used our day off to visit some enlisted clubs. I frowned in disapproval but let it slide.

Once in the car, he instantly started to get on my nerves.

“What’s wrong with Mrs. Big Dope?  

I just looked over at him and said nothing.

“Did you mix paint with her favorite measuring cup again?”

It didn’t seem worthwhile to respond.

“Don’t tell me you spilled more wine on her ZZ Top CD.”

“No,” I said, “and that wasn’t me, if you will remember. Someone lied about it.”

He ignored me. “You didn’t badmouth Matthew McConaughey did you?”

“Could you ever imagine,” I said, “that it might be something you did?”

“Me?”

“You.”

He didn’t speak for almost a minute. “Can’t imagine a thing.” He said, after the pause.

“That last shape you took.”

“Oh,” he said, “that real pretty girl with the big …”

“That’s the one.”

“Weren’t they good friends? I mean back in high school?”

“Hardly.”

He truly seemed dumbfounded. “Why … what … how could it be? You mean they weren’t best friends?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“They didn’t like each other?”

“Bingo.”

“What was the the cause, explanation, or justification for the action or event?”

“The reason, as I understand it, was a boyfriend. I learned long ago not to ask.”

“She had another boyfriend before you?”"

“Well yeah,” I said, mimicking the young folks.

“How could that be? You’ve been married for how long now?”

“Tomorrow marks 43 years,” I said. “That’s where we are headed: to buy her a gift.”

And Big Dope tells me that you see
some weird-looking people at Walmart. - C.W.

“Hey,” he said. “Maybe she would like a new Astrocelestial Sound Synthesizer. You know how much she likes to mimic that woman with all those kids.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I read where the women in California all want a new A…”

I cut him off. “Forget it,” I said. “I think she wants a new tool box and a set of metric wrenches.”

“A true romantic,” he said and we continued in silence.

Later, at Walmart, I had to rush over and intercede when I heard him tell a vacant-eyed adolescent “associate” that he wanted to buy a card for “the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event.”

Would anyone like to keep an alien for a while?

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Finally, buy Big Dope's book so he'll shut up about it.
- C.W.

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