BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Part 5 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: So I Have This Idea…

…And I’m, gonna get maie air air reed…

Okay, old song reference, I know. I’ll stop singing now.

Unfortunately, Tom Hanks wasn’t available for my bachelor party… He was busy building his career as I was preparing to embark upon this odyssey.  But, that really didn’t matter. Given that at that point in history we weren’t on speaking terms – and we aren’t right now either, for that matter ,(probably because we’ve never met), I figured I’d just find someone else to arrange the entertainment.

But, let me back up a second…

In the last blog, E K finally said yes to the big question. While you would think that I would have jumped up and run around the room screaming, “She said YES! She said YES! WooHoo, she said YES!” – a very logical assumption given the circumstances, mind you – the reality is, I didn’t. Truth be told, it took something on the order of 30 seconds, maybe even a full minute for it to sink in that she had given me an answer that was vastly different, and diametrically opposed to the one she had been giving me to date.

Now I had a problem. No ring. Yeah, back when I had originally broached the subject I didn’t have one either… I had just been winging it. Given the answers I had been getting, I hadn’t been in a hurry to go purchase one either… Fortunately, my frugal live-in girlfriend turned fiancee didn’t mind. I think that just for grins we ended up using a cable tie, or piece of string, or something innocuous that was laying around the shop at the time. I doubt she even has it anymore because she’s nowhere near as sentimental as me, but watch her read this blog and prove me wrong. If she does, I’ll be sure to let everyone know…

(Just as an aside, for the record, a few years later when things were no longer so tight, I saw to it that she received a full blown engagement/wedding set with as much gold and as many sparkly rocks as I could manage in a tasteful ring…)

At any rate, now a snowball began rolling downhill, and it just kept growing…

For one thing, we made arrangements to take E K’s parents to dinner, whereupon I asked her father if it would be okay for me to marry his daughter. Yeah, I know, old fashioned, but even though it seemed to surprise him I think he appreciated the gesture.

Then, we were in the middle of buying the house, which as noted in the first of this blog series, was a fixer-upper from hell. I suppose we were just in such a hurry to get out of the duplex – not because it was a bad place, mind you. Not at all. In fact, it was actually very nice, and the landlord was a great guy too. You see, it’s just that the lease had a “verbal-handshake” rider saying no pets.

I can see the question marks now… Yeah, Kathy’s cats… explain that one, Murv…

Well, you see, we had signed the lease on the duplex and were in the middle of shaking hands when the landlord said, “Oh, I forgot to ask, you don’t have any pets do you? Because, they aren’t allowed…”

At this point, E K and I simply looked at one another then turned to him and lied through our teeth. We had been looking for an apartment for what seemed like forever, and this was the first one in our price range that hadn’t rejected our application due to my rocky credit history and hers as well – you see, she wasn’t delinquent on anything, but having been married and at that point not officially divorced just yet, her name was tied to her ex-husband’s debts, which made it look like she owed way too much to way too many folks to be able to afford an apartment.

So, re-acquiring the earlier thread – we bought ourselves a fixer upper. Being twenty-somethings, giddy in love, and in a hurry to get out of an apartment before we had to sign another year long lease, we probably didn’t inspect things quite as closely as we should – and, by the same token, probably paid far more for the house than it was worth, which is most likely why they accepted our offer immediately with no qualms whatsoever… But, oh well, live and learn…

Here’s the thing – we had set the date for our wedding to be October 31. Halloween. Samhain. Not the traditional sort of date, but hey, given that on that night the veil between the worlds is said to be at its thinnest, relatives and friends who had already gone over to the other side (i.e. croaked) would find it much easier to attend… Hey, works for me.

At this point, all manner of things were in motion – for one, we were beginning to wonder if we were going to have to postpone the wedding for legal reasons. It seems the attorney handling E K’s divorce had been ditzing about, and while it was one of those uncontested, sign on the dotted line, thank you very much, goodbye sort of divorces, the legal eagle had been postponing and postponing getting the paperwork filed. She seemed to have a bit of a procrastination issue. Rule number 1, never use an attorney who advertises in the TV guide. Yeah, I’m not kidding… But, in this case it wasn’t EK’s “frugalness” to blame, it was the ex-husband’s militant stinginess. There’s a huge difference… But, I digress… The thing here being, in the state of Missouri you have to be  legally divorced for X number of days, (I can’t remember the actual number), before you can remarry. Or at least at that time, (back in the dark ages), that’s the way it was. I’m not sure what the statutes are these days.

Fortunately, the procrastinating mouthpiece finally got off the pot , or sh*t, or whatever she needed to do that she had actually already been paid to do.   The old marriage was dissolved and we ended up meeting the deadline with something on the order of 3 days to spare. So, that was all good.

Now came the new money issues… Obviously, since Kathy had been married before her parents weren’t going to pop for a wedding, even if they could have afforded it, so it was all on us. And, we had just bought a house, so we weren’t exactly flush with excess cash. We looked at halls, and even hotel suites, to rent for a reception but just couldn’t hammer them into our budget, no matter how hard we tried or which corners we cut. So, we finally made a decision… We would pour our limited funds into fixing up the house as best we could in the interim, buy some food, and have the wedding right there in the living room…

Yeah. Stupid eh? Well, we were young. Give us a break.

The problem we faced now is that by the time we reached this decision and had officially closed on the house, we only had about 30 days to make this happen. Somehow we did… (Remind me to tell you sometime about running a floor sander for hours on end…)

Of course, in the pictures you will see over the next few installments, it is obvious that things are woefully unfinished – no baseboards, partially sanded woodwork, and don’t even get me started on the kitchen, which remained untouched as far as remodeling for a few years. We were concentrating on the living room and dining room, since that was where things were to take place. The rest was, unfortunately, temporary storage for the time being…

So, where did this leave us? Obviously planning a wedding and reception, but it also left us being our own caterers as well. And, being the eclectic, bizarre folks we are, we didn’t want all the traditional wedding food one has , in Saint Louis, at least.  That being tasteless roast beef, baked mostaccioli, and green beans almandine. No, we just had to be different. Therefore, our menu ended up consisting of a spiral cut Honey Baked Ham® from none other than the Honey Baked Ham® company themselves. In addition, we also served veal parmigiana, and apple-rice curry. Erin, remember Erin from ComputerTrend, the busty blonde? Well, Erin’s husband was actually a restaurant manager at a local country club so he loaned us some extra chafing dishes they had laying about, which was a huge help. With that, we were almost finished with the menu save for several large boxes of assorted heat and serve hors d’oeuvres, also purchased from HBH… When we placed that order the guy at the counter called into the back, “I need x y number of boxes of Whores Duh-Vores…” E K had plenty of fun with that…

We ordered up a keg of beer,  and I even picked up everything I needed to make sauce for the veal patties. We should have been set, but we weren’t…

My dad dropped by for a visit and asked how things were going. Beaming, we told him all was good, and outlined the menu choices. He nodded, grunted, then asked, “So what kind of cake are you getting?”

Kathy and I looked at one another. Then we looked at him. Then we looked at one another again.

I said, “Uhm…uhh…”

Kathy said, “I guess we aren’t. We can’t afford one.”

My father raised an eyebrow, then snorted and said, “Bullshit. You can’t get married without a cake.”

With that, he reached into his wallet and withdrew a 100 dollar bill and handed it to Kat while adding, “Let me know if it costs more.”

And so, we went “cake shopping”… This was new to me. Even with all my experience with restaurants and diners, (on my mother’s side of the family) , I had never been all about the baking end of things… So, I did what any self-respecting man should do… I gave in to whatever E K wanted, listened closely so that if she needed help making a decision I chose whatever it sounded like she was leaning toward, and voila… We had a cake…

At this point all of the guys reading this are probably doing a rundown – “Lemme see… ya’ got ham, ya’ got beer, ya’ got cake… Yep, we’re good.”

If I had to guess, however, I’d say you women readers are most likely all pretty antsy at this point. I suspect – though I may be wrong – that you’re probably dancing around in your seats, shaking your fingers at the screen, and muttering, “But… but… but… what about… but…“

Do you mean, “What about The Dress?”

Yeah, I figured as much.

So, yeah… We also had to go wedding dress shopping. Yet another new experience for me, especially since I was wholly unaware that the groom was in any way involved in the selection of the dress.

Okay… We’ve established that this wasn’t Kat’s first rodeo. In addition to that, our house isn’t all that big, (i.e. no room for a 90 foot long train), and we were out of money. Also, while she can be as girly girl as the next woman, she isn’t all about too much foo-feraw…

And so, we went wedding dress shopping at… wait for it… Kmart®. Yeah, “Definitely Kmart, definitely definitely definitely Kmart…” I think I might have even picked up a 3 pack of tighty-whities while we were there.

Now, before you ladies get together a mob to come after me, it wasn’t my idea. It was Kathy’s. But, let me tell you something, she picked out an incredible dress and couldn’t have looked any better in my opinion, and it came in at around 40 bucks. She already had a brand new pair of white heels, so no new shoes were needed in her estimation. See what I mean about her being frugal? Yeah… it amazes me too…

So… Now were were set. She had a dress, we had a menu, the polyurethane was dry on the newly refinished hardwood floors, and we even had rings… we’ll get to those in a bit. My best buddy, Scott Ruddle, (after whom Detective Benjamin Storm in the RGI novels is modeled), was tapped to be my best man, and Erin (remember Erin?) was to be Kathy’s Matron of Honor. We had a license, and we even had a preacher – Kathy’s father, who is a Baptist Minister…

The day was fast approaching, and little did we know all hell was about to break loose…

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT: Mahwage: Mobile Bachelor Party…

Part 2 of 12

Continued from: Mahwage: What’s A Nice Girl Like You…

As I said previously, our story actually begins, for lack of a better starting point, on January 28, 1986, the fateful day of the Challenger disaster…

By January of 1986 I had been out of a job for nearly 6 months. My position with American Home Video Corporation, (aka AHVC and VideoConcepts™),  had come into jeopardy the moment the then Tandy Corporation, (aka Radio Shack®, and now Radio Shack Corporation), had concluded a buyout deal and taken over the company. I was in middle management and, as many of you well know those are usually the first jobs to be purged and refilled. It’s more economical for a corporation to hire in cheaper help and train them from scratch rather than to keep paying salaries that have increased throughout years of service and try to re-train people who are already set in their ways under the old regime. It makes sense from a business standpoint. It doesn’t make it any easier to swallow though…

And so, there I was. Jobless and pretty much penniless. You see, I had been caught up in the “credit craze” of the early 80’s. Sign here and get a $1000 credit line… No money down, no payments for 6 months, $2500 instant credit… Just show us a valid driver’s license and a current credit card, and you too can have a credit line with us…

Now, this wasn’t a HUGE problem when I had a job. I am truly a responsible person for the most part, (But, I do have my moments, just like anyone else). I pay my bills and have no desire to be beholding to anyone for any longer than I absolutely must… However, since I had been caught up in the craze, I was single, had a great place to live where the rent was cheap, (see previous blog “There I was, Sitting By The Pool…” January 23, 2009), I had overextended myself. A new car, (because I desperately needed one), was the biggie, but then there were a lot of toys… Video camera, TV’s, Stereo, Computer Gadgets… I could go on and on… With income, I could pay my bills and have some pocket money. Without income, my savings dried up very fast, and unemployment simply didn’t meet the basic needs. I started falling behind in my bills, collectors were calling, and I wasn’t having much luck in the “finding a job” department.

While I had been in Sales/Sales Management with my most recent job, I had also kept my finger in the electronics repair end of things. That was really my first love… well, second actually, because writing is my first… and it was something I was very good at doing. However, the job market for techs was a bit depressed at the time, so I had taken the sales position with AHVC. Well, here I was a couple of years and a handful of months later, and the job market for techs hadn’t seemed to become any better. So, I was looking for either one – tech or sales, anything would do, although I preferred tech.

Well, I finally received a callback on my resume… The company was known as Crazy Dave’s ComputerTrend. (I just looked for some info about them on the net so I could provide a link, but didn’t find much of anything, probably because they went under a long, long time ago.) In a nutshell, ComputerTrend was a Midwestern chain of discount computer resellers. What we called them back in the day was a “computer whore”… What that meant was they undercut everyone. They even sold systems below cost in order to increase volume and make up the profit on the back end with  high margin accessories. They had radio commercials that sounded like an advertisement for a monster truck rally… Literally… An artificially excited voice screaming about the great deals you could get on MacIntosh computers, IBM computers, Epson printers, and so on… Their catch phrase, believe it or not, was – voice one: “But how much is it?” excited voice 2: “It’s cheaper than a toaster!”

Yeah, a toaster. I have no idea, so don’t ask me. The only thing we ever called a toaster in the computer biz were some of the old external drives, and back then they weren’t exactly cheap.

So, obviously, ComputerTrend wasn’t my first choice in jobs, but by this time I was desperate. The bill collectors were starting to get nasty, and I was willing to take just about anything involving a paycheck, even though said paycheck was likely to be, and definitely was, far, far less than I had been making before…

Moving on, the day came for my scheduled interview, January 28, 1986.  I was set up to be at the Olive Road location around noon that day. I rolled out of bed early, went through my normal routine, showered,  futzed about with a B B S I was running at the time, got dressed for the interview, then kicked back in front of the TV with a cup of coffee to watch the space shuttle launch.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my love of the space program, I was born on 2/20/62 – the day John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. His Mercury space capsule was christened Friendship 7, and legend has it I came very close to being named John Glenn Sellars. At any rate, the space program has always held a special interest for me.

Well, quite obviously the rest of that shuttle launch is sad history… Roughly 73 seconds into the flight an “O” ring failed and Challenger disintegrated, killing the seven crew members and plummeted bit by bit into the Atlantic ocean. I watched, like countless others, in abject horror as the scene played out before me on the screen of a 27 inch JVC TV / Monitor, (I remember that particular detail because it had been purchased from my previous place of employment)…

Then came the words, “Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction. We have no downlink… We have a report from the Flight Dynamics Officer that the vehicle has exploded.”

I was devastated. At that point I literally considered calling the ComputerTrend Store and seeing if I could reschedule my job interview. I know, that sounds a bit melodramatic, even to me. But, at the time I was in a state of shock, as were many others. And being such an avid follower of the space program, the disaster hit me very hard.

However, I also had a sense of responsibility. I knew I needed to restart my income, and soon. The job market had been softer than a marshmallow in July and I realized I couldn’t risk losing this opportunity. Little did I know it was about to become a life changing opportunity in more ways than simply a paycheck.

I gathered myself, spoke to a few folks on the phone who were just as shocked as I at what had happened with the Shuttle, then donned a tweed sport coat and headed out for my interview. I did, however, make an obvious geek statement: I wore a black armband. Fortunately, the interviewer watched the news and was enough of a geek himself  to appreciate it.

As stated earlier, what I really wanted was a tech position, but they didn’t have one. So, I interviewed for a floor sales position. While I had the necessary qualifications for the job, I was later told that what clinched it for me was my tech background. Some of the veteran sales folk at the store had already heard about my resume, and were all about having a “personal tech” on staff with them. You see, the St. Louis tech center for ComputerTrend serviced three separate stores, and while it was actually located just across the parking lot from the Olive Road location, the techs there had their hands full already.

So now, I was gainfully employed. Well, as gainfully as I could be under the circumstances…

Two weeks into my new job, life took yet another turn. I was finally able to shake loose from the other salespeople who had me doing tech support for their clients as well as configuring the hardware they had sold. I needed to sell something myself if I was going to make anything besides base draw salary. So, I worked the floor and almost immediately  sold a system.  I wrote it up and arranged for the customer to take delivery the next day since he wanted a custom configuration. Then I set my schedule so that I could visit the tech center the next morning. You see, the tech center wasn’t just where the repairs took place… It was also the warehouse, and I needed to obtain the components I had just sold in order to put them together.

Now, I have to add in a side note here: I had been told all about the tech center when I started on my first day. As it happened, there was a young lady working there named Erin. All of the men at the store were constantly panting over her, and rightly so. She was a good looking blonde with an ample chest. She was also an absolute sweetheart… Therefore, since I was male the other guys included me in their tellings of lustful fantasies over this young woman. I can still remember hearing repeatedly, “Just wait until you see Erin…” Well, I did. She came by the store a few times, and I had occasion to go by the tech center a few times, myself… However, I didn’t have the same reaction to her as the rest of the men, not because she wasn’t perfectly lovely, because she was, but, she simply didn’t affect me the way she did the rest of them.

Well, as it happened, I also knew there were more folks over at the tech center besides Erin. There was a man by the name of Phil, and I had the opportunity to meet him as well. Very nice guy. But, there was also another woman by the name of Kathy – she was the manager. We had not yet crossed paths because she was either out sick or on vacation whenever I happened to be over at the tech center. So, since I was hoping to eventually snag a position as a tech,  I asked the salespeople at the store about her. Their response was, “Dude, watch out for Kathy…  She’s a real bitch…” Thing is, they were serious…

Okay, they had worked with her, I hadn’t, so I took them at their word. Obviously this Kathy person was someone I needed to give a wide berth if I valued job, life, and limb…

Back to the story…

I arrived at the store early that day so I could run across the lot and pick up the components I needed for the sale I had made the evening before. Now understand, we are talking in terms of a large shopping center so it wasn’t right next door or anything,  therefore I drove my car over in order to be able to load up the boxes and take them back to the store proper. I entered the foyer of the tech center which had a wall blocking the windows so that you couldn’t see into the back area where the techs were working and stock was stored, a bit of a security measure I suppose. Proceeding inward I rounded the corner in hopes of seeing Phil or maybe even Erin, since I already knew them… Besides, I really didn’t want to come face to face with this psychotic, misanthropic bitch named Kathy. I had enough to worry about with bill collectors and the like breathing down my neck, so I didn’t need a manager type to decide she hated me and get me fired.

But, when I made the turn and looked up from picking my way through stacks of boxes, there was no Phil or Erin in sight. What met my eyes, however, was an absolute vision…Yeah, be warned, this is where it gets Hallmark Channel™ sappy, because I remember it as vividly as if it was a color picture hanging on the wall in front of my face right this very minute…

There, perched on a stool in front of a tech bench, and working on an I T T Xtra P C Compatible C P U, was this petite woman. She had shoulder length, brown hair that held just a minor hint of auburn when the light caught it just so.  Her complexion was a pale ivory, with a few freckles here and there. She was wearing a white blouse, a black and red horizontally striped button down sweater, a black skirt with a hemline that came to just above her knees, and black leather, mid-heeled pumps. Her legs were crossed casually and ladylike. She had a tech manual open on one side of the C P U while wielding a screwdriver in her hand. She turned slowly and regarded me with a flat, “Yeah, what the f*ck do you want?” kind of expression tweaking her delicate features.

She was, no doubt in my mind, the Kathy Monster I had been warned to avoid.

But, much like my reaction to Erin, I had a completely different take than the other folks about this petite dynamo. I did not wet my pants and flee from the tech center as had been predicted by the veterans… No… I stood there and began to sweat as my heart started pounding in my ears. My knees felt like Jello and my feet felt like bags of wet cement. I know I began talking, but I couldn’t possibly tell you what I said… I suspect it was something on the order of incoherent babbling because the Kathy Monster simply sat there staring at me like I had lost my mind… Eventually, I managed to get myself together and pick up the items I had come to retrieve, all the while having a hell of a time taking my eyes off this woman. I think I even tripped and stumbled once or twice, effectively making myself look like an even bigger idiot than I already had with my nonsensical blithering.

By the time I returned to my car with the components, and was preparing to shuttle them back over to the store, my heart still had not settled. It was bouncing around inside my head, and blood was rushing in my ears like whitewater rapids… I felt lightheaded, and even giddy with excitement. I think I sat in the driver’s seat and glazed over for several minutes… After a healthy measure spent trying to make myself stop hyperventilating, I asked aloud this simple question:

“What the f*ck is wrong with you, Sellars?”

I didn’t have to wait for an answer because it was already sitting on my shoulder, bludgeoning me in an attempt to get my attention. In that moment it became crystal clear…

I had just fallen in love.

More to come…

Murv

… NEXT:  Mahwage: Money I Don’t Have…