Other than Stuart getting new glasses and me getting the worst allergy attack of all time, life hasn't been too exciting recently. In order to keep you all reading, I'm copying a popular story from my old medical blog about our adventures with an elliptical repair man. Hope you enjoy, and hopefully there are more exciting moments soon to come.
Stuart bought an elliptical. It is super awesome, except for the fact that it doesn’t work. After spending a few hours putting it together we spent a few more hours taking it apart to find that one teeny green wire had snapped in half. I don’t know if we did it or if it came like that, but we called the repairman nonetheless.
So, being the good fiancé that I am, I offered to study here at Stu’s house today so I could let in the repairman who was to be arriving at 8am sharp. At 9 there was a knock at the door. I answered to find a tall man in black denim jeans and a black collared shirt with rose-colored glasses on. I let him in and then he said, “Um, my wife is with me. I hope that’s ok.” As he turned to gesture towards his car I noticed the reason for the tinted glasses: two lazy eyes. I invited the wife in as I wondered how one could take apart machinery and do wiring with two lazy eyes.
A few minutes later his wife appeared at the door. She looked like she hadn’t brushed her hair in a week and introduced herself with unmistakable slurred speech. Yes friends, she was drunk. I am alone at Stu’s condo with a lazy eyed repairman and his drunken wife.
I explained the problem to the repairman and told him I was pretty sure there was a faulty wire. I even pointed out the location where the wire was to save him some time. He got to work and I came into the living room to find wifey flopped on the couch, playing with Mardi and calling her “Titty Tat”. I offered her the television or a book, which she refused. I sat away my board studying materials and we started chatting. I found out her youngest son was graduating from high school tonight. That, somehow, led to her telling me her entire life history. Sometimes it was hard to make out a few of the slurred words, and sometimes the sentences were out of order. I will abbreviate the story for you below. And no, I am not making any of this up. Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.
When “Jane” was 18, she moved out of her parent’s house because she could never get along with them anyway. She moved in with two of her good friends, who just so happened to be sisters. What do you know but a few months later she was married to their father, a man who I could only imagine to be at least 20 years her elder. They were married for 12 years and “it wasn’t too bad”. They had two sons, and after a while her hubs started getting a little too friendly with a girl from work. And this wasn’t just any girl. She was ugly. And she had a glass eye too. So Jane got suspicious and drove to glass eye girl’s apartment one night to find the blinds open and her husband standing there with no shirt on and his pants unzipped. Needless to say, they got a divorce, and her ex-husband and the girl with the glass eye were married 4 days later.
Then after the divorce, Jane went out partying for a while. She had fun being single, and then married someone else for a year. That was the “worst mistake of her life”.
By this time, her two sons grew up. The oldest son, we’ll call him Jim, got a job and became friends with a “real far out girl” that he worked with. They hung out some and then one night decided to go out to a bar together. They both woke up in bed together the next morning (surprised, anyone?) and then fell in love. They bought wedding bands and called each other ‘wife and husband’ but never actually got around to getting married. Who needs papers, anyway? They had a baby soon. Jane never fully believed it was her son’s baby. Everyone knew that Jim’s wife cheated on him a lot, but strangely only with black men. The son was white but Jane was still suspicious. After the baby was born, Jim’s wife went kooky, packed up a diaper bag, and boarded a 3 day bus to Colorado with the baby. This led Jane and her new husband (lazy eyed repair man) on a wild goose chase to gain custody of their grandson. It never worked because the judge never wanted to hear their case. After a few years the wife broke off her and Jim’s fake marriage and they never heard from her again. Now Jim is married to a new lady and in the army. He and his wife have a new baby named Tobias McDonald (real name there). He is in Iraq and just got a new tattoo on his side of a naked lady. His wife drew it for him. He showed it to Jane on Skype.
Well, back to Jane now. Here’s how she wound up with husband number three (repair man). Let’s call him Jake. Jane was trying to get back on her feet after the 2nd divorce and losing her job. Jake’s mom, who she apparently knew, suggested that Jane move in with Jake. Just for a week, just to see how it worked. So she moved in. It “wasn’t too bad”, they fell in love, and 3 months later they were married and living in his trailer with their 4 dogs and 3 miniature ponies (I assume those live outside).
Now, while her husband was in the next room with our new elliptical machine, Jane proceeds to tell me about their marriage. It’s pretty good. She really wants to kill him sometimes. He makes her wash his clothes and fix his lunch. Why doesn’t he ever do anything for her? He likes her hair long, she likes it short. She doesn’t like it that he controls her life so much. Sometimes she really regrets getting married again at all. Sometimes she wants to just be free so she can move away somewhere else.
After TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF THIS (interspersed with 3 bathroom breaks, a tour of the house, comments about my tomato plant, etc), Jake comes back in the room. He has discovered that there was a faulty green wire. In the exact spot that I showed him. He’ll have to come back next Friday to fix it.
Don’t you just love learning people’s stories? =) This is why I always talk to people on planes … in the hopes that I get to hear something like this!
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