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Dogs Get Mad — People Get Angry
And yet I’ve been mad more times than I’d like to think about.
The back story includes a broken heart, an impulsive act, and a stupid move.
I moved with my boyfriend to attend the only college he could get into. Not exactly academic material, we ended up at a junior college in Florida. Tooting my own horn here, however, I had had an array of university choices with scholarship offers but hey, I was 17 and in love. Fait accompli.
One day, my beau let another coed take my seat on the back of his Kawasaki 250, so I countered by running off with a sailor that had been sniffing around. I ended up married, dropped out of school, and transplanted to Ohio. I often reflect back on my past with the comment," I did my time in the Midwest.”
Oh, did I mention I’m from New York? We acknowledged the existence of the east coast and the west coast but were never really clear about what was in the middle of the country, except maybe Chicago.
Too proud to admit my colossal mistake, having made my bed so to speak, I got stuck. I had no degree, no family support, and no employable skills and was tied to a man that espoused, among other things, that women shouldn’t be educated. Or be in the workforce for that matter. A stranger in a strange Hillbilly Elegy land.
When my father initially heard about this man (4 years my senior at 22), having really liked my high school sweetheart, he commented, “we have to get rid of this guy.” Alas, with the vestiges of my teenage, oppositional defiant behavior in play, that didn’t happen until way too late.
I’ll skip all the background indignities, emotional abuse, and psychological scarring that ensued during those six years of my life but rather will jump to the day in question.
Maybe two years into the marriage, neighborhood rumors circulated that this husband of mine was seen with a barely out-of-teenagehood young girl. Funny, I no longer remember her name but she was the daughter of another older couple on our block.
I didn’t really buy it. He worked the day shift at a glass factory, came home to supper every night (had to be on the table as he walked in the door), then spent evenings tinkering on cars. Then I saw them together. They were only…
