My life had made a full 180 degree turn. In December 2007 I was this sniveling mess of a man, begging for the attention of a cheating wife, who couldn't afford to go anywhere or do anything. Including my PT Cruiser, that I had bought to try and win the woman back, I had rallied up a debt of near $80,000. My credit cards were all maxed out just trying to win her love and I was fighting for a relationship that the other party had abandoned several months ago.
Three years later, I had finally come out of that funk. I was going places that I had always dreamed of like New York City,
San Diego
and to top it off my college team, the Utah State University Aggies, had beaten our big brother rivals, Brigham Young University, in football.
The woman I had married was now an ex-wife. It had finally occured to me that I wasn't in love with her, just who I thought she was. That meant I could allow myself to move on.
Excluding the scary experience I had had at work, (see part 5 of when a trees limb breaks it calls on its roots for strength) everything in my life was now in order. The hunt for my "REAL" eternal partner in crime (an expression for wife not a confession of crime plans) was in full swing and I was searching high and low. This weekend my hunt would take me to Atlanta, Georgia.
Ecclesiastes or, the Preacher
CHAPTER 3
1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
This scripture comes to mind when I think about a humans ability to compartmentalize their lives. Compartmentalizing my feelings was something I learned to do at an early age. When I was a child, there were a lot of times when I would get spanked and cry and then in the next moment I was expected to be over it. In fact sometimes my dad would ask, in the middle of a beating, the rhetorical question because of how loud we were crying, "Do you want to cry?" My gut reaction was, "Yes, yes in fact I do want to cry." Luckily I didn't go with my gut but rather with my mind reading skills which told me, "He's asking that question because if I don't stop crying then he's going to give me a reason to cry."
As a youth I compartmentalized nearly everything with the corporal encouragement of my dad. If it was time to be sleeping, I had better be sleeping or else. I even remember getting spanked for not being asleep when I actually was sleeping. It was the strangest thing to wake up to a sore bottom with only having remembered a faint dream about getting spanked.
When it was time to have fun, I really had fun like there was no tomorrow. When it was time to play football, I did it like nothing else mattered on the planet. If I was time to play basketball, everything was forgotten except basketball.
I compartmentalized the scary incident that happened on Thursday December 9, 2010 and went into dating mode. Dating mode, to me, is where I get to know someone enough to see whether I like them enough to get into a serious exclusive relationship. I consider a date to be any activity where I'm getting to know somebody. It's not a difficult task to get into dating mode for me. However, getting into that serious exclusive stage is extremely difficult and more rare than a three-toed Pygmy sloth. In my lifetime, I can only say I have been in three relationships. There are a few reasons for this futility and while telling the story of meeting this young woman, who I will call Susan in this blog for anonymity, I will tell you what I have found out about myself.
As a child, one memory stands out that represents some of the reason why I'm timid when it comes to the opposite sex. (I'm laughing out loud just thinking about it) The neighbor across the street had a trampoline and also a pretty female about my age lived there as well. She would jump on the trampoline often. Her blonde her would bounce in rhythm with each leap she would make. A couple of times she waved at me and smiled. Often, I would kneel with my chin on the window sill, watching her jump on the trampoline.
One day, I was gawking at this neighbor girl and my dad walked in and said jokingly, "What you staring at? You in love with the girl?" You could insert a sound here of a needle on a record being pushed sideways to explain what just happened. I was busted and ashamed. Later on I remember him mocking me by repeating several times in a short tune, "Samoana is in love," and all of my siblings joining in on the tune.
I know he was joking now but at the time, I was embarrassed. It's not wholly his fault, I was shy all through high school and junior high school. It was a socially awkward time for me, in which when I look back in my journals I can see I was super depressed. In fact the whole idea of putting my lips against someone else's lips grossed me out. People are super surprised when I tell them I never went to prom or any school dances for that matter.
I met Susan on an Internet dating site for Latter Day Saint, or "Mormon", people. I found her pictures to be very cute. We moved our relationship from the dating website to the social media world of Facebook. Eventually I called her. My sense of humor involves a lot of "talking trash" and she was able to hang with me in that arena. I used to call her phone and do my voice impersonations on her voicemail. She had this lisp that and southern accent that I found very attractive. Until this particular weekend in December of 2010, we had never met.
She picked me up from the airport in a GMC Jimmy, which see affectionately called "Jimmy." We had many conversations about our cars, playing as though they had names and personalities. Often I would talk smack about Jimmy over the phone to Susan, just to see if I could get her wound up.
I had devised this whole scheme about meeting Susan for the reason that I had wanted to play her in Monopoly. Really I wanted to get to know her better. I had expected her to read between the lines because a person doesn't fly all the way across the country to play Monopoly, unless it's like the monopoly championship. All of this was a ploy that I had used, finding a 'MacGuffin' if you will, so that I can actually get to some other goal. (a Macguffin was a word Alfred Hitchcock used to describe a plot device or goal that a protagonist uses but it turns out to be unimportant) I used a lot of MacGuffins to avoid being clear and concise and having to say, "I want to get to know you," because I still feel sort of embarrassed to just come out and say what ever it is that I'm feeing towards a girl.
Also, when in need of something to say just resort to the MacGuffin. We didn't have a Monopoly board so I brought it up that we needed one. While on our way, we got pulled over. Jimmy got impounded and we were standing out on the curb, waiting for a ride from one of Susan's relatives.
I know she was very embarrassed about the whole thing. One of my favorite jokes was calling later and asking if Jimmy was on parole yet.
Her relative came and we went to eat at an IHOP or Waffle House, I forget. They dropped me off at my hotel and more fun would ensue the following morning.
Atlanta has a few things to offer, among them is the World of Coke and the largest aquarium in the United States. That's what we did.
You may be asking, "How in the world did Monopoly become the MacGuffin?" Well if you are asking that, I'll explain it. She also professsed to me to be "the Champ" of Monopoly. I told her how my dad and siblings used to always play Monopoly. I didn't tell her that I always used to come in third but I did challenge her to a game. Throughout all our phone conversations I never said much about how good I was at Monopoly I just let her talk all the crap about it. She claimed she was going to beat me so bad and talked all sorts of trash. Realistically, I didn't think I was going to beat her but I got her to tell me one of her tactics on winning Monopoly and that was that she never did trades.
Saturday night December 11, 2010 this highly anticipated Monopoly game took place. Just like my life at that moment, most things went my way. I got a couple of monopolies and soon she realized she wanted a trade. At that moment, I told her that I was going to use her own strategy on her and not give her any trade at all.
I had won but life, just like the game of Monopoly, doesn't always go your way. In the game of life, I was on a roll. I had rid myself of $80,000 in debt. I was enjoying getting to know a woman who had potential to be my eternal companion. I was visiting places I had always dreamed of. Little did I know that in two days I would be getting every bad card you could find in the chance pile and mortgaging all my properties.
