I’ll provide a brief explanation of my absence for my long-distance friends. The financial disaster to which I referred in the previous post was a good old-fashioned case of getting fired. It came as a big surprise because I was the only one following state and federal law where I was working. When I became frustrated enough to complain to the boss, I was told I was just jealous and the most egregious violator was held up to me as an example to emulate. Further complaints only got me tagged as racist in addition to “just jealous”. Finally, the day came when our new supervisor sidles up to me and tells me, with a literal wink, “You don’t have to be good, Don. You just have to look good.” I told him that, since it was a matter of public safety, I wasn’t going to cut corners or falsify documents and if things didn’t change I would report him to the authorities. In my good-natured naivety, I actually felt bad about having to get so tough with him. So, to no one’s surprise but my own, when I arrived at work the next day I was beset by management, whisked into the office, and immediately fired for “threatening to kill everyone the previous day.” I was relieved of my keys and shown the door. Truly, no good deed ever goes unpunished.
As you might expect this introduced an additional element of stress into my marriage. When we married, we were both relatively low-paid educators with similar political and social beliefs. Among those beliefs was that the necessity of a voucher system if the public education system was going to even approach functionality. As luck would have it, she took a “desperation” job with every intention of leaving the next year. It is a charter school dedicated to giving kids a “second chance”. As with every left-wing institution, the slogan is deceptive. I believe in second chances. God knows I’ve needed a few. However, to even get sent to this institution of “learning” a kid is usually on something like his 37th chance, and should have long since been in jail. My wife was of considerably higher quality than what they usually got and she skyrocketed through the ranks-and pay scale. Soon she was earning four times my income. This was when she “started growing balls” as my brother would say. The 80-100 hour workweeks were only the beginning. My lovely started gaining weight-a lot of it. By the end she tipped the scales at about 380 pounds. Even as bad as this all was, the worst part was what her constant immersion in the leftist world was doing to her. At one point she informed me that she was no longer a Republican, she was a Christian Socialist. Why, you might ask? It’s easy. She informed me that if one reads the Bible, and actually understands it, you’ll be forced to admit that Christianity IS Socialism, and that Socialism simply IS Christianity put into practice.
I decided that, since what is good for the goose is good for the gander, I would make some unilateral changes of my own. I would look for a new job, but I would be more selective and not take the first thing that came along and I would use the resultant slack time to work on my frequently neglected novel. This introduced two new forms of tension: First, my wife bitterly resented the loss of income, even though towards the end my job provided less than 20% of the family budget; Second, she feared embarrassment should my book ever be published. All the more ironic since this particular book was her idea. You see, I had been writing another book when we met. During that time, for some reason that I have long since forgotten, the works of a certain obscure author came up. I was familiar with him and my wife expressed curiosity so we obtained some of his books. She only read a few of them because she found them to be poorly written (a frequent complaint) but she did find the concepts and themes presented to be “provocative” and “stimulating”. Some time later, she requested that I temporarily abandon the book I was writing and start a new book based on similarly provocative and stimulating themes, but do a better job with the basics. Eager to please her, I agreed. Now comes the stressor. After over 3 years of writing and rewriting, researching material, extensive note-taking, a glossary, multiple appendices, and writing numerous back-stories, she announces that she wants me to abandon the project. Why? Because being associated with the story, even obliquely as the wife of the author, would be professionally embarrassing and could possibly harm her career. Naturally, I told her that after 500 pages of manuscript and nearly as many of ancillary material the answer wasn’t just “no”, It was “Hell, no!”
There is more. There always is. No doubt I could have handled things better, but then I could have done much worse. Regardless, things went along like that for awhile, then my sweetie filed for divorce. She could have handled that a little better, and she couldn’t have picked worse timing. I won’t lie, it hurt. It hurt a lot. Still, the 380-pound thing took a lot of the sting out of it.
I took the opportunity to take stock of my life, because that’s what one does at such times. For the first time in 20+ years, I had nothing to tie me to the place I was in. I decided that was as good a time as any to go back to my hometown to make a fresh start. I had left because I hated small town life, and I still do. I just have come to hate city life even more. Besides, my son and grandchildren are here and I felt an impulse to be a more involved granddad. So I moved home. It was a good decision, but I did overestimate the demand for middle-aged, overeducated white guys. I’ve been living “pillar to post” as they say for several months, but I’ve finally bagged a job. I’m looking forward to resuming blogging without having to pull punches for the sake of my ex.
Have a good one, folks.
