Conversation with My Wife (136)
Getcher motor runnin’… Head out on that datin’ highway…
ME: Ann Litts posted a new story in Medium. It’s about dating guys with low self-esteem.
DEB: Is that the Ann with the raccoon who wants the feeder refilled?
ME: Rosie the mama raccoon. That’s Annie Littlewolf.
DEB: Is this the Ann who you refer to as “Ann Red Bug” because her profile picture is a red VW?
ME: That’s Anna. I think. She changed her profile picture. All these people are changing their profile pictures and—
DEB: It’s a woman thing, honey, let it go. So this is the Ann who does all the nice poetry?
ME: That’s anna breslin. This is the Ann with the motorcycle.¹
DEB: Okay! So she dates guys with low self-esteem? That seems odd. I pictured her as tougher than that. Better taste, anyway.
ME: She’s actually making the point that no one should ever date someone with low self-esteem. It never ends well.
DEB: Duh!
ME: This was right after her divorce.
DEB: Oh! Well, we’ve all been there. Poor girl. It’s not easy out there.
ME: (pause to work the whiplash in my neck) ANYway, it got me thinking, did I have low self-esteem when we started dating?
DEB: Dating? No.
ME: I like to think I was pretty self-confident at work.
DEB: And that being where we met, that worked well for me. Also, you were pretty confident on our dates, but that was because we’d been out to lunches a lot of times so we knew each other pretty well. No, you didn’t have problems until we got married. That’s when you started to fret that any little thing you did that upset me meant I was getting ready to leave you². But that was…
ME: Just the first three or four years?
DEB: More like the first couple. Finally you got it figured out that I knew my marriage to [second husband] was a mistake after six months, but I stuck around for four more years, so I tend to not walk away from commitments on minor problems. Plus you were confident that we would do well getting married, and I thought you’d realize at some point you made a mistake proposing to a two-time loser.
ME: You only have to win once, Debster!
DEB: We only have to win once, Jackster!
And on that we’re pretty confident!
¹Lots of Anns, Annes, Annies, and Annas amongst my Medium peeps. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Hey, my wife’s middle name is Anne!
²Nothing to do with my first wife telling me she’d been having an affair… on our first anniversary.
Copyright ©2019 by Jack Herlocker. All rights reserved. Is that okay? I can try something else if you’d prefer.
