BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Part 7 of 12

Continued From: Mahwage: Mobile Bachelor Party…

… Morning arrived way too damn early that particular October 31st. I mean, I know morning pretty much always arrives early, which is part of its job description as “morning” after all. But on that one Saturday in 1987, I am firmly convinced that it arrived several hours ahead of  its regular schedule. Hangover aside, I’m telling you, someone was screwing with the fabric of time, probably just to f*ck with me personally…

You just watch… Some physicist will eventually figure out that when they first switched on that new Large Hadron Collider, a minuscule temporal ripple shot backward through the space-time continuum and completely f*cked up the clocks on October 31st, 1987. Mark my words, it’ll come out someday…

For the record, I really believe this. Well… Not really… But you have to admit it sounds good…

But, let’s move on…

Yeah, I was hung over. I was hung over like nobody’s business. In fact, I have not been that hung over again since that day, nor do I believe I was ever that hung over prior to that day. I was H U N G O V E R with a capital everything… Shoot me now. End my misery. Oh toilet bowl, you are my only friend… Whatever God is up there listening to me, I promise I’ll never do it again… Yeah. That hung over.

And E K had absolutely no sympathy for me whatsoever… The Bitch!

Now I suddenly knew what all those people at ComputerTrend were talking about. My bride-to-be was just plain heartless…

Okay, again, not really. And I’m just joking about the “bitch” thing… Really…  I am. Just don’t tell her I said it, okay? Good… Now, the truth is, looking back on the situation I can certainly understand her lack of sympathy… And,  in reality I could even understand it back then too, even as I hugged the porcelain and told it all about my friend Ralph… I mean,  after all, I had done it to myself… But, of course, that didn’t make me whine any less…

And then to make matters worse, (as if they weren’t bad enough already), there were these things called Belly Bombers churning around in my gut… We will just skip any details surrounding my ingesting of those evil little burgers, (which, to this day, I still ingest), or more accurately my inevitable expulsion thereof… Suffice it to say, the throne room was my kingdom for quite some time that morning, and much air freshener was sprayed from flowery painted aerosol cans…

Once I managed to get myself cleaned up and my eyeballs moved back to the proper side of my face, (although they still weren’t actually working properly, and kind of had the whole overused teabag sort of feeling for the rest of the day,) I set about helping the lovely, though miffed, E K set things up for the evening. Of course, one of my duties was cooking, so I managed to stay out of her way some of the time by doing just that. I had prepared the sauce for the veal parmigiana a couple of days ahead of time, the ham was already cooked, and my soon-to-be mother-in-law was handling the apple-rice curry, so most of the prep work had been done…  It really just came down to a bit of frying, heating, assembling, and arranging in the chafing dishes.

Sometime around early afternoon, E K was going through her mental checklist to make sure we hadn’t missed anything too important in the grand scheme of the evening. As she rattled things off, I answered check, yo, yeah, or whatever response was warranted for each thing. Eventually she came to an item for which I had no answer, therefore I remained silent…

After  a handful of heartbeats, assuming I had not heard her, she asked again, “Your suit?”

And again, I remained silent…

Assuming I had gone temporarily deaf, my soon-to-be-wife raised her voice and queried once more, “Murv? What about your suit?”

Finally, after a bit more awkward silence, I cleared my throat, hemmed and hawed, then replied, “Uhm… I have sport coats. I don’t have a suit.”

At this juncture E K was looking at me like I was a puppy who had just left a big piddle puddle on the carpet for the 37 thousandth time. I wasn’t quite sure what she was going to rub my nose in, but I could clearly see that it was coming.

“You don’t have a suit?” she asked.

“Uhm… No,” I replied.

“We’re getting married in a few hours. What were you planning to wear?”

“Uhm… I dunno.”

I knew that was the wrong answer. Hell, most of the time even I won’t accept it as a valid answer unless I really and truly believe the “answerer” doesn’t actually know, in which case I generally don’t even bother to ask in the first place.  E K didn’t want to accept it either, but by this point she knew that her soon-to-be-husband was pretty much a hopeless case, at least in his present condition.

“Okay, come on,” she announced in a huff as she snatched up her keys and purse, then all but took me by the hand and led me out the door.

Now, at this point in the story, I have a question for all of you… Were any of you folks aware that unless you spend right around enough to buy a compact car, it is impossible to purchase a suit and have it altered the same day? You were? Well, it came as a shock to me. I figured what with all those sewing machines and stuff they could at least do a nip here and a tuck there… You know, just enough to make it presentable for the evening.

Well obviously, such services were nowhere within our budget. And, what with me having Basset Hound legs and Barney Rubble arms, the suits we found on the rack were definitely going to need a bit of a touch up. We finally found something on sale, at a decent price, that E K approved after doing the reverse Pretty Woman scenario with me. (Once again, it is my contention that the scriptwriters had to have been in St. Louis and witnessed the Dillard’s shopping spree, because we did this long before the movie…)

But, since I’m not going to get any royalties, I suppose I should move on… But, you know, I’m just sayin’… Yeah, okay… I know… Digressing again… Back to the story…

So, with new suit in hand, even though the pant legs  and arms of the jacket were 49 feet long, we raced back home. The wedding was scheduled to take place right there in our living room at 6 PM.  At this point, we were only a scant few hours from achieving critical mass… But, while I now had something to wear, my new fancy duds were pretty much going to make me look like Tom Hanks, (still not speaking to him, by the way,) from the end of Big. (given that said movie didn’t hit the screen until 1988,  this is yet another flick that obviously stole a scenario from my life… Damn, I should be wealthy off the residuals by this point…)

Back to the story again…

Anyhow, in my way of thinking, there was no real reason to worry about my oversized Sunday go to meetin’ suit. Why? Because E K happens to be an A1 seamstress, and I knew it. In fact, she used to make all her own clothes and had even considered making her wedding dress, had there been enough time between all the rehabbing, cleaning, running around, working, cooking, etc… (obviously there wasn’t… enough time, that is… hence the whole Kmart® dress thing… but like I said, she was flat out gorgeous anyway, off the rack  Kmart® togs or not…)

But, as we well know, my way of thinking isn’t always on the same page as the rest of the world’s, and in particular, E K’s… You see, I don’t sew. I mean, I can darn a sock, but when I once tried to really, really sew something clothing wise with actual sleeves and such, it pretty much came out as a misshapen pile of fabric with random threads hanging all over it. Therefore, it hadn’t occurred to me that there was no time to actually hem the pants, tack up the jacket’s sleeves, etc.

Of course, my dear E K knew this, and simply patted me on the head with a sad look of pity in her eyes. Still, we had a wedding on the near horizon, so she continued on undaunted without threading a single needle. She went to the toolbox, pulled out a roll of double stick tape, warmed up the iron so she could make a few creases, and there you go… Taped and tailored… Just like downtown.

And, you know what? That suit was still hemmed and altered with double stick tape when I finally gave it away to Goodwill, and it looked just fine. (Yeah, I finally gave it away, very recently, in fact. Yes, there was some sentimental attachment there, but it was no longer in style and I would never fit into it again, no matter what. I can only lose just so much weight…)

So… there we were. I had a suit, E K had a dress, the food was just about done, and we even had some fancy luminaries E K had made to line the sidewalk and porch. All systems were go, people would be arriving soon, and the clock was ticking as it counted down to the climactic zero-hour…

You know, I wonder if those wingnuts over at “24” stole that one from me too…

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Clink! Clank! Oh, Murv!

Part 4 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: Money I Don’t Have…

I am always fascinated by the Hallmark Channel™ movies, and even some of the bizarre shows on network TV, when some man spares no expense to have his marriage proposal scrawled across the blue by a skywriter in a biplane, or flashed up on the scoreboard at a major league baseball game, or plastered across a billboard along I-pick a number… Hell, I am even fascinated by the “froot loops” who “pop the question” in front of 137 1/2 people at a high society party with mom, dad, sister, brother, extended cousins, BFF’s, and old ex-boyfriends who aren’t yet over the breakup even though it happened 4 years ago, all in attendance. (I have no idea where that half-person came from… it’s just one of those things. Maybe it’s one of the ex-boyfriends who was emasculated by the Femme Fatale in question ala Dead Men blah blah Plaid… see previous blog or reference later in this entry.)

Every single time I see this depicted, whether in real life or in a fictional setting, I cringe. I mean, CRINGE. Portions of my anatomy actually retreat to safety just as they would in response to frigid water, if you get my meaning. The hairs on my neck prickle, my stomach churns,  butterflies race up and down my esophagus, and I just can’t even bring myself to look because I am so preemptively embarrassed for the idiot. The first coherent thing that goes through my mind is, “You friggin’ moron! What if she says no? Did you even bother to think this through before you opened your pie hole?”

In my way of thinking, it’s just like what Scout, the nine year old narrator of To Kill A Mockingbird, tells the reader with regard to her father, Addicus Finch’s dictum regarding the cross examination of a witness in court: Never ask a witness a question that you don’t already know how they will answer, because you are liable to get a response you don’t necessarily want. That isn’t a direct quote by any means, but it’s close enough. (BTW, if you’ve never read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I highly recommend that you do so, but, then, I am all about reading so…’nuff said, I suppose… Just be warned that the language is dated, regional, and is virtually guaranteed to be offensive if taken out of the context of the story and its time period…)

But, of course, I am diverging from the topic as I usually do. We were discussing this whole marriage proposal thing… So, anyway, I think I have established that I believe these “public proposers” are a half step the other side of being brain dead. Of course, that’s just my personal opinion, and we know the old adage that can be applied there.

Still, since that is my particular take on the subject, when those first few months together had gone by like a lazy stream beneath a bridge, well, to be honest there were a few rough patches of whitewater, but we managed to stay dry, and I decided to ask E K the “big question”, I was tickled to death with myself that I had elected to do so in our living room with no one in attendance save me, her, and three cats.

Why? Because she said, “No” of course.

You heard me. No music came up. No deep, passionate kiss. No I love you’s , (not that we didn’t pass those back and forth regularly, because we did.) There were no fireworks, no doves flying off into the sky,  no sparklies, no  gasps, no tears, no butterflies. Hell, there wasn’t even a housefly… Of course, it was the middle of Winter, so I guess I wasn’t all that surprised by the lack of houseflies… But, my point here is, she simply said, “No.”

Now, to be fair, I suppose I need to expand on this just a bit. While she said, “no”, it certainly wasn’t an unequivocal, resounding, “you gotta be freakin’ kiddin’ me… No way in hell you dipsh*t!” sort of no. She didn’t hit me, she didn’t run screaming from the room, she didn’t pack a bag and head for the state line. In fact, she didn’t even laugh at me, which was a good thing in my estimation. What she did was give me a “qualified no.”

By “qualified no” I mean it went something like, “No, not right now.”

Well, while it certainly wasn’t the happy-happy joy-joy moment I had been hoping for, at least it wasn’t the whole Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid line about stiletto stomped roasted chopped man heart on toast… Not at all. In fact, it left the door open just a bit. Granted, it was just a crack, but as far as I was concerned, so long as the door wasn’t slammed and double bolted in my face, there was still a chance.

So, of course, trying to stay on honest, even ground with her, I told her of my intentions… “You know I’m going to ask again, correct?” I said.

“Yes,” was her simple response.

Now, I suppose I could have been a comedian and asked her again right then and there, but I already knew what the answer would be. And, more than that, I didn’t want to annoy her any more than I already was.

“Already was?” you ask…

Of course. We had only been living together for a few months, and dating for a few months before that, even though I had been head over heels  in love with her for better than a year. Truth be told, she was annoying me too. It’s all part of the game, and why I highly recommend… No, not another literary work, although there’s this Sellars guy who writes damn good paranormal thrillers if you are interested… No… What I recommend is living together a while before filing all that legal paperwork that causes courts and lawyers to get involved when it comes to divvying up stuff if things don’t work out.

What I am saying here is that, much to my chagrin, the love of my life had habits that got on my nerves. Nothing crazy and out there on a limb like giving hamsters Mohawks and leaving the hair laying about in the living room or  sleeping upside down in the bed with cottage cheese in her socks. No, nothing like that. Just little things. The normal everyday stuff.  The things a person does one way that another person does a different way… That sort of “thing”. And, I knew damn well I was doing the same to her. When you get two folks under the same roof there is a period of adjustment… It’s all part of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. But,  as much as we were getting on one another’s nerves, we were also working through it and reaching a middle. Adjusting our patterns and coming to a relationship equilibrium. And, just so you know, that equilibrium is never fully reached… But, you do get closer with each passing year, and things just don’t bother you near as much any longer.

Hence, the reason I didn’t ask again just yet. I waited, bided my time, and about every thirty days when things were going well and happiness was in full bloom, I would “pop the question”. Now, don’t try to read anything into my timing. I wasn’t matching it up to her particular rhythm with the lunar cycle or anything like that. I didn’t base my selection of the day to ask on whether or not I saw a box of feminine hygiene products sitting on the counter in the bathroom… Go on, admit it, that’s what you were thinking, I would have. The reality is I simply figured once a month was frequent enough to keep it in her mind, but not so frequent as to be overly annoying. Just a little annoying.

At any rate, each time I asked I made sure it was in a private setting, and each time I asked I received the same answer – “No, not right now.”

“You know I’ll ask again, right?”

“Yes.”

And on we went… And as we went, I became complacent and jaded about the question. I would ask, but I always knew the answer before I even uttered the words.

Still, as the months rolled on I sucked it up and sallied forth each time. (no, not the comic strip)… As long as the answer contained, “not right now,” I figured I was still in the running, no matter how jaded I had become.

By now, we were looking at buying a house rather than continuing to waste money paying rent. Married or not, we were looking for an investment. Due to my credit situation at the time it was pretty much a matter of her buying a house, but with an eye toward jointly paying the mortgage and the plan of us both living there. We scrimped, saved, and I even borrowed a couple grand from my father, which I promptly repaid – well, promptly as in about two years later, but I added interest to the total, and I honestly believe he was tickled to receive the check. Even though he didn’t “need” it, nor had he even expected repayment, it proved to him that I was as good as my word, and to him, a man’s word was really all he had. But, as I’ve said before, that’s a different blog…

At any rate, we were sitting at work one Saturday… yeah, when you are building a company you tend to work long hours and have very few days off … and since no customers were going to be coming in one of the owners brought along a twelve pack of beer. I was configuring an old R L L (Run Length Limited) hard drive in a system – to put this in perspective, this was a large hard drive for it’s time…it was all of 30 Megabytes. Not Giga… Mega… So anyway, I was running an old debug command: g=c800:5, which is basically a call to a particular segment of ROM ,(read only memory), on the hard drive controller which would initiate a built in program that would allow the drive to be “low level formatted”… That being, setting up sectors before creating a partition and high level formatting to create the file allocation table (FAT) and such… But, you know, I am now digressing into ancient techie talk here so I am sure you are all glazing over…

Back to the story…

The point I’m trying to make is that I was plugging away at this system and E K was standing behind me, much like she did when we worked together at ComputerTrend. A bit close and a bit distracting… I honestly think she took great pleasure in being able to have that effect on me, even though she staunchly claims she never realized I was turning into Silly Putty at her very touch… Anyway, I took a swig of my beer and since no one else was in the tech center with us at the time, nonchalantly asked over my shoulder, “So, you wanna get married?”

I continued about my task on autopilot, (after all, I had formatted drives like this thousands of times before and could do it in my sleep), and was completely secure in my thoughts that I would hear, “No, not right now.”

But, no matter the answer, the calendar said I had to ask anyway. The prescribed number of days had passed and it was time to throw it out there to see who saluted, smoked, or otherwise kicked it around.

Imagine my utter surprise when Kathy leaned against me,  laid a hand on my shoulder, clucked her tongue, let out what might possibly have passed for a giggle, and  then said, “Yeah, okay… Sure… Why not…”

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Goin’ To The Chapel…