Wednesday – The Perfect Couple
Jun. 10th, 2009 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
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I met my husband at a local Mexican restaurant last week after I got off work. It's a nice place in a secluded location, which means we can dine there in un-crowded comfort until the day they run out of money and realize they really should have opened a restaurant closes to the center of town, where all the other restaurants are. I spotted my husband and son sitting on the outdoor patio. As I walked toward them, I heard a man greet me by name.
I turned toward the other couple dining on the patio. I must have had a puzzled look on my face, because the man said, "You don't recognize me, do you?"
I shook my head and told him no, I didn't.
"I'm Sean Thompson*, we went to the same church growing up."
"Oh, my God, Sean! How are you?" No, he didn't look at all like I remembered. The Sean I remembered was a skinny kid and kind of dorky. I was now looking at a tattooed, muscle-bound ex-Marine. It turned out he lived in my little town now and was a lineman for the telephone company like his father before him.
He introduced me to his wife and asked me about my family. I told him my dad was still living in the same house I'd grown up in and filled him in on the lives of my brothers.
"My Dad still lives in Houston," he said, "and Mom's up in Killeen." He paused. "I don't know if you remember they got a divorce.
I was tempted to say, Remember?! How could I forget? Seriously, that was a spectacularly sordid mess that was! We talked about your parents divorce around my house for years after it happened. Did you know your mom called up my dad at his office and hit on him?
Instead, I nodded somberly and said, "Yes, I think I recall that they split up."
Sean's parents, Joanne and Glen, had been my 5th grade Sunday school teachers and were later counselors for our church youth group. They were the most lovey-dovey couple I'd ever met in my life. Glen never called Joanne by her name, he called her "Toogars," which was baby talk for "Sugars."
Whenever you saw them they had their arms around each others waists, and Glen would nuzzle his wife and call her "my sweet little Toogars" and she would giggle like a school girl. My friend Macy and I thought they were cute, and we called her Toogars, too. Toogars was very pretty, in a middle-class-stay-at-home-mom sort of way. She had auburn hair, a baby-doll voice, and eyes as wide and innocent as a doe.
They seemed so happy, so lovey, so cutesy and obviously so crazy about each other that we were all stunned to learn one day that Glen had left his Toogars to move in with (and eventually marry) a 19-year-old girl who had gone to Sean's high school and graduated just a couple years ahead of him. It seems Glen (then in his mid 40s) had gotten his teenaged girlfriend pregnant and decided he would be happier if he left his wife of 20-plus years to marry someone young enough to be his daughter. He justified his actions by letting everyone know that a few years before he had come home from work early to find his sweet little Toogars in bed with another man, so if they were going to look down on him they might as well know the whole story and look at Joanne in the same light.
Did I mention these were my Sunday school teachers?
The divorce went through, Glen moved into an apartment with his new child and his child-bride. A month or so later my widower father got a voicemail message at work from Sean's mother purring, "Ray, it's Joanne. I just want you to know I'm single again. Give me a call sometime."
I was aghast. As much as I liked Toogars, the idea of this silly woman as a stepmother and of dorky Sean and his even dorkier kid brother being my stepbrothers was too much.
"Daddy, don't call her," I begged.
"I wasn't planning on it," he said. My father likes low-maintenance, trouble-free women, and Toogars looked like trouble with a capital T to him.
Still, it was good to run into Sean. They say men usually go for women who remind them of their mothers, but Sean seems to have gone in the opposite direction. His wife is an average, tough looking woman who - in the words of my husband - looks like she could beat the crap out of you if she wanted to and not break a sweat doing it. His mother was always made up to the 9s and well coiffed, while his bride looks like she probably doesn't even own a tube of lipstick.
Let's put it this way: she doesn't look like the sort of person anyone would refer to as "Toogars" unless they wanted to get punched in the face. I wonder if that's what attracted him to her in the first place.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
*Names have been changed to protect all involved, whether they were innocent or not.
.
.
I met my husband at a local Mexican restaurant last week after I got off work. It's a nice place in a secluded location, which means we can dine there in un-crowded comfort until the day they run out of money and realize they really should have opened a restaurant closes to the center of town, where all the other restaurants are. I spotted my husband and son sitting on the outdoor patio. As I walked toward them, I heard a man greet me by name.
I turned toward the other couple dining on the patio. I must have had a puzzled look on my face, because the man said, "You don't recognize me, do you?"
I shook my head and told him no, I didn't.
"I'm Sean Thompson*, we went to the same church growing up."
"Oh, my God, Sean! How are you?" No, he didn't look at all like I remembered. The Sean I remembered was a skinny kid and kind of dorky. I was now looking at a tattooed, muscle-bound ex-Marine. It turned out he lived in my little town now and was a lineman for the telephone company like his father before him.
He introduced me to his wife and asked me about my family. I told him my dad was still living in the same house I'd grown up in and filled him in on the lives of my brothers.
"My Dad still lives in Houston," he said, "and Mom's up in Killeen." He paused. "I don't know if you remember they got a divorce.
I was tempted to say, Remember?! How could I forget? Seriously, that was a spectacularly sordid mess that was! We talked about your parents divorce around my house for years after it happened. Did you know your mom called up my dad at his office and hit on him?
Instead, I nodded somberly and said, "Yes, I think I recall that they split up."
Sean's parents, Joanne and Glen, had been my 5th grade Sunday school teachers and were later counselors for our church youth group. They were the most lovey-dovey couple I'd ever met in my life. Glen never called Joanne by her name, he called her "Toogars," which was baby talk for "Sugars."
Whenever you saw them they had their arms around each others waists, and Glen would nuzzle his wife and call her "my sweet little Toogars" and she would giggle like a school girl. My friend Macy and I thought they were cute, and we called her Toogars, too. Toogars was very pretty, in a middle-class-stay-at-home-mom sort of way. She had auburn hair, a baby-doll voice, and eyes as wide and innocent as a doe.
They seemed so happy, so lovey, so cutesy and obviously so crazy about each other that we were all stunned to learn one day that Glen had left his Toogars to move in with (and eventually marry) a 19-year-old girl who had gone to Sean's high school and graduated just a couple years ahead of him. It seems Glen (then in his mid 40s) had gotten his teenaged girlfriend pregnant and decided he would be happier if he left his wife of 20-plus years to marry someone young enough to be his daughter. He justified his actions by letting everyone know that a few years before he had come home from work early to find his sweet little Toogars in bed with another man, so if they were going to look down on him they might as well know the whole story and look at Joanne in the same light.
Did I mention these were my Sunday school teachers?
The divorce went through, Glen moved into an apartment with his new child and his child-bride. A month or so later my widower father got a voicemail message at work from Sean's mother purring, "Ray, it's Joanne. I just want you to know I'm single again. Give me a call sometime."
I was aghast. As much as I liked Toogars, the idea of this silly woman as a stepmother and of dorky Sean and his even dorkier kid brother being my stepbrothers was too much.
"Daddy, don't call her," I begged.
"I wasn't planning on it," he said. My father likes low-maintenance, trouble-free women, and Toogars looked like trouble with a capital T to him.
Still, it was good to run into Sean. They say men usually go for women who remind them of their mothers, but Sean seems to have gone in the opposite direction. His wife is an average, tough looking woman who - in the words of my husband - looks like she could beat the crap out of you if she wanted to and not break a sweat doing it. His mother was always made up to the 9s and well coiffed, while his bride looks like she probably doesn't even own a tube of lipstick.
Let's put it this way: she doesn't look like the sort of person anyone would refer to as "Toogars" unless they wanted to get punched in the face. I wonder if that's what attracted him to her in the first place.
*Names have been changed to protect all involved, whether they were innocent or not.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 07:05 pm (UTC)And for the record........
There's something special about a girl who is tough enough to strike a match in the palm of her hand.....or so I've heard. ::::whistling innocently::::
no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 02:08 am (UTC)You and your bottom shelf goddesses! **shakes head**
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 08:51 pm (UTC)HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 08:54 pm (UTC)I would hate to have been Sean, knowing everyone knew all that about your parents. That has to be hard.
But you did make it entertaining in a story.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 02:18 am (UTC)Sad and funny have always had a way of colliding in this world. It's like God enjoys a good dark comedy now and then, and plenty of people are always willing step forward to play those roles in those sad, funny stories.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-10 08:59 pm (UTC)Since then, I haven't believed that "perfect couples" are perfect; if they're THAT wonderful, something MUST be wrong. Give me a couple that actually fights from time to time over the "perfect couple" any time.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-11 09:15 pm (UTC)*HUGS*