BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

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…

Part 1 of 12…

What’s a nice girl like you… Doin’ married to that guy?

We’ll get to that in a minute. Right now I just have to say that I absolutely loved that bit from The Princess Bride.

“Mahwage…Mahwage is what bwings usth togethwerrrr …tooooo-dayyyyyy.”

Of course, I actually got a huge kick out of the whole movie. I even own the DVD… But, like usual, I didn’t come here to talk to you about a 1987 comedy. Well, not one that spent time on the big screen, anyway…

The reality is this: I get asked, more often than you can imagine, how it is that E K and I met up, “lell in fuhve”, and came to be hitched. I fully suspect that there is a kind of interest there born of circus sideshows. You know, the train wreck awe of seeing “Timmy the ape boy” or “Lulu the tattooed lady”. What I mean is, my guess would be what’s really going through their minds at the time is, “How in the hell did a troll like you end up with a hot babe like her?” But, in the end that is really just my own self-deprecating insecurity showing through.

I usually tell myself to ignore what my off-kilter grey matter “thinks” they are asking and simply answer the query with an abbreviated rendition of the  true and bizarre tale. You know, just enough to tell them what time it is in at least four geographical zones, but not quite enough to explain exactly how to build a clock. However there is an inherent problem with that approach, because more often than not it just ends up begging a few more questions. And then a few more… And then a few more…  Until finally, the entire story has been told, albeit in a roundabout and somewhat disjointed fashion – and as always, leaving out something or even some things entirely, simply because the discombobulated sequence has confused me and I forgot.

The truth is, the full span of our story is semi-complicated. I say semi because it isn’t really fraught with major complexities – just a few bumps, a couple of dips, a hill or two, a small mountain, and a handful of incidents that read like a script for an episode of a sitcom. All in all, no different than anyone else’s “love story”, other than the fact that it’s our story, and not their story. Know what I mean?

Because it truly is a FAQ when I am on the road, and even in email from interested fans, I had this bright idea that maybe I should blog about it.  Get the story out in the open and in a chronological, coherent fashion so that the next time I am asked I can say,  “Here’s the thumbnail sketch, but if you want the whole story, then you should read my blog…” I mean, how’s that for a segue to my website, eh? (no, not the mall cop electric two wheeler thingy – I’m talking about the  actual meaning of the word and all that).

Besides, when you get right down to it there is also that whole dying brain cell factor to consider. I mean, since I’m getting old and stuff like that, it might be  time to think about recording these important memories for posterity (or, posterior as the case may be) before I lose them for good. I mean, hey, my kid might need something to laugh at in her later years when I am in Depends^TM, drooling all over myself, and being a burden on her. (You see, I think E K will probably still be a hot babe and most likely have run off with “Ricardo the Pool Boy” at that point… I’m pretty sure I’m her picture in the attic so to speak. As the years go by, I just keep getting greyer and she keeps getting prettier…)

Well, moving on, I think we all know how bright ideas can turn out to be really intense Xenon flashes with no diffusion filter fired directly into your face, or in some cases just a really dim flashlight with almost dead batteries. It all just goes back to perspective, I suppose. At any rate, I think maybe  this particular stroke of brilliance is kind of like a whole row of  bulbs in one of those fancy, flashy signs, winking on and off in a taunting fashion. Why? Well, allow me to explain… You see, when I sat down to compose this blog, I gave it a bit of thought. First I had the initial question to answer, and then there were the often forwarded followups…

Yeah, you guessed it… Dominos began to fall, and before I knew it I realized that this “little ditty ’bout E K and Murv” was in no way something Mister Mellenkamp would be able to condense into 4 or 5 verses over  approximately 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 minutes. I mean, he’s good…real good, in my opinion. I am actually a fan… Loved Scarecrow. Great CD…

But, I really shouldn’t go off on that tangent…

You see, the thing is this story has legs – and, I mean besides those shapely gams belonging to E K herself – yet another tangent that could keep me occupied for hours, but we won’t go there in public... The simple fact of the matter is that it will take more than one song, or even music video, to do the story justice. Well… maybe if it was a music video… Hrrrmmmmm… Well, let’s just not go there either…

Seriously… it became painfully clear to me that this tale really and truly has a life of its own. One that I wasn’t going to be able to condense into one blog. Therefore, I set about the task of figuring out just what it was going to take to do it justice. Well, the answer surprised even me. All I can tell you is this – it’s way bigger than a breadbox.

And, so begins a series of blog entries. An interconnected web of how E K and I came to be a couple joined together in wedded bliss (or so they say, whoever “they” are), and moreover the insanity punctuating it all. At this stage, I have sketched outlines for 7 separate entries to tell this story. Some long, some not so long. But, in any case, 7 separate incidents throughout the process, each of which deserves its own title and place in history. Some of them are funny,  some of them are simply Hallmark Channel^TM sappy, and others are just plain “WTF” moments. But, in the end, the real point is they are all 100% true, with witnesses and everything…

And, just so we are clear, I’m not going to guarantee that the number of entries involved here won’t grow to 10, or even 12 before everything is said and done… it could happen. I am, after all, a “writer of books”, and the process kind of does that fluctuating thing at times. But, right now, I can almost assure you that there will be a minimum of 7 over and above this introduction.

So, what I would like to do now is start you off with a picture.  A picture from the first page of our wedding album (note: we did not hire a professional photographer for the basic reason that we couldn’t afford it, therefore all of our pictures in the album are candid and amateur… but, we feel that captures the moment even better than if they were truly posed.) When E K reads this blog she just might beat me about the head and shoulders for showing this pic to the world, what with it not being the most flattering of them, for either of us. But, I think it sets a tone that you will come to understand as this blog series progresses… (Note – throughout this series you will see my dear and lovely referred to as E K as I do now, as well as Kathy, her given name, and even Kat, her preferred moniker… E K has become her tongue-in-cheek persona over the years, so it is just one of those things. Suffice it to say, the three names are interchangeable and refer to the same person, just in case it seems a bit confusing…)

By way of explanation, the photo below was taken in the kitchen of our  recently purchased (recent as in 1987 when the photo was taken) “Handyman’s Fixer Upper” of a house (read between the lines here – “needs to be totally gutted and completely redone”).

That would be my young and gorgeous bride on the left, running about with a container of sugar and her mouth hanging open. The guy in orange with his back to the camera would be me.  (see, I told you it wasn’t exactly flattering.) As you can see, the house needed more than just fixing up. It needed life support, which we were both willing to provide. Unfortunately, we had just purchased the money pit less than 30 days prior to this photo being taken, and had already been spending every waking hour  when not at work, refinishing hardwood floors, patching plaster walls, rewiring, and all manner of other things involved in rehabbing a house.

Oh, and the MOST IMPORTANT point. This photo was taken a mere handful of hours prior to our actual wedding ceremony and reception, all of  which took place in our partially remodeled living room, October 31st, 1987.

But, before we can get to that, we have to back up a bit and start at the beginning… A beginning which, unfortunately was a very dark day for our country and space program. And, an even more horrible day for 7 astronauts.

January 28, 1986… The day of the Challenger disaster.

I know, I know… It seems a morbid way to start a blog series about love, romance, and marriage, but certain events in our lives are impressed upon us like technicolor still frames, individual in a sense, but interconnected by a thin thread that ties everything together and makes us whole…

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Love At First Sight…