Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Funny Girl


Okay, okay.
I hear ya.
I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately.
I mean, I try to always offer posts with an uplifting message, even if they’re serious, but it seems you like me best when I am full-on sassy, sunny and snarky.  Which makes sense, because I’m Girl on a Wire, not Girl on Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.  Right?
Here’s the thing: divorce fucking sucks.
It fucking sucks, and I’ve been up to my eyeballs in it for too long.  The worst part?  My soon-to-be-ex hubby isn’t an asshole.  Nope.  Sorry.  Would love to demonize him but I can’t.  I mean, damn…if he was an asshole, I could be Funny Girl - at his expense - all day long.  Give me a caricature and I’ll run with it.  But a genuine, flawed-like-all-of-us human being?  One who’s having a tough time, too?  If I pick on him, that’s just sad.  Mean.  Then I’m the asshole.
So what’s a girl to do?
Lately I’ve been trying to take a more well-rounded and positive look at my failed marriage, particularly at the moments that made me laugh.  Because, truthfully, there was no shortage of those moments.  The soon-to-be-ex and I were a case of opposites attracting, but he won me over with his sense of humor and irreverent fun.
So here are a few tidbits I hope he won’t mind me sharing (otherwise my lawyer’s about to make more money…):

  • Remember the scene in my novel Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husbandwhere Finn tells Eve his story of accidentally peeing on a midget?  Yup.  Inspired by true events.  Somewhere in Honduras there is a little person who was - unintentionally - urinated on by my hubby.  And yes, the man wooed me with this tale.  First or second date material.  Draw your own conclusions.
  • Hurricane Irene forced our wedding to be bumped up by 36 hours.  We tied the knot as the winds picked up and the storm rolled in.  (Omen, anyone?)  Unaware that the hubby had been caught in the rain coming into the church, I thought he was drenched in sweat.  I spent the ceremony fanning him and asking him if he needed to sit down.  I was convinced he might drop like a fly at any moment - and I may not have been far off.  When we danced to Adam Sandler’s “Grow Old With Me” from The Wedding Singer, I literally had to hold my groom up.  The man’s not a dancer, nor does he like being the focus of that much attention.  The smile on his face looked something like this:
    image
  • When he picked me up to carry me over the threshold of our home on our wedding day, the hubby let loose an impressive fart.  And suffered a minor lower-back injury.  Clearly, in spite of having met my goal weight for the big day, I am no delicate little flower.  (And he’s no bodybuilder.)  We laughed about it briefly, until the laughter induced back spasms that sent me on a quest for Aleve and alcohol.  Why do they not show this sort of shit in the movies?
  • One Halloween, I donned this outfit and challenged our guests to identify me.  In hindsight, this may have been the beginning of the end.  Very bad wife:
    image
  • Also on Halloween, we dressed our dogs like this:
    imageAnd there were Christmas cards like this:
    image
    image
    Hindsight being twenty/twenty, maybe we invested more in humor than we did in our marriage.  Then again, maybe we made the most of our common ground and simply ran out of steam too soon.
    Maybe the moments like this:
    image
    only carry you (and the employees at Homegoods) so far.
    Who knows?
    The thing is, life - much like shit - just happens.  If you’re blessed enough to be around funny, vibrant people, maybe it matters less how long it lasts, and more how you enjoy the moment.  
    Yeah, divorce fucking sucks.
    But I can still look back and laugh.
    So, I’ll leave you with this - a joke the soon-to-be-ex hubby recycled so often it elicited groans:
    A pirate walks into a bar.  He’s got a steering wheel sticking out of his pants.
    The bartender says, “Hey - do you know you’ve got a steering wheel sticking out of your pants?”
    The pirate nods and says, “Arrrrrrgh!  It’s drivin’ me nuts!”
    {Admit it, you laughed…}

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