Recorded Before A Live Studio Audience

I was at a loss for a subject for today’s post until about half an hour ago, after Brittany disclosed her discovery of the vile and regrettable videotaped evidence of my first wedding. She’s been working on cleaning out the accumulated detritus of my office, which has – for the last year or so – been the dumping ground of everything that wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the house. It started with boxes, when my parents moved into my house for a brief period after their home was bisected by a giant tree during Hurricane Ike. Then, after they moved into an apartment and I moved myself back home and brought Brittany and Trey along with me, the boxes gave way to scattered bits of furniture and bulky toys before eventually progressing into the catch-all area for anything and everything that we didn’t want to throw out, but had no idea what to do with. It’s been long past time to gut the sucker.

So that’s what she’s been up to this week. I think it started Monday morning, as a way to work out stress and aggression after a sweet little old process-serving lady showed up on my doorstep to serve Brittany with papers filed by her ex-husband, seeking the court’s assistance towards helping him sate his semi-regular rage. In truth, it’s his way of retaliating against Brittany after she got wise to his scheming around Trey’s birthday and he didn’t get his way. It’s a whole thing that I don’t really want to get into here, save to point out that I believe the experience drove her to brave the many sordid perils of the Danger Room as a way to keep her mind off things while our attorney sprang into action. The upside of the whole business, of course, is that her ex actually saved us a bit of time and bother, as well as a small chunk of change. Since Brittany was about to file her own papers seeking enforcement for egregiously delinquent child support payments along with some other business, him striking first actually enabled us to skip some of the filing fees and court costs. And, since I’m both getting my office back as well as saving some scratch from the ordeal, I file the whole thing in the Epic Win column.

During this mad rampage of unbridled cleanliness, it seems that my lovely wife came upon a videocassette of something I’d long thought lost, destroyed or stolen by my ex: the video of our wedding. Brittany waited until I’d been home awhile and was fed and content before springing her discovery upon me. And, of course, she wanted to watch the damned thing…

Being with the technical times, I don’t have a VCR handy for playing the tape, and I’d hoped that would get me off the hook of having to endure viewing it. However, Brittany had already planned for this excuse and was quick to point out that we recently put a VCR/DVD combo player in Trey’s room after he murdered his latest DVD player. (He goes through them like a genuine thought through Paris Hilton’s head: there one second and gone forever the next.) I sighed and accepted defeat, and we made our way into the Cars-themed bedroom of a toddler to revel in the horror and regret of the whole miserable experience of reliving my first wedding.

It was a surreal sort of thing, watching myself go through the opening moments of a marriage that would eventually dissolve into a thick lunatic soup of hate and loathing – all of which was completely unknown to the earlier version of me on the tape. That guy was all googley eyed and hopeful, eager to start down the short path of a temporary forever with his blushing whore bride. Now, anyone who’s been reading Coquetting Tarradiddles since the early days – along with anyone who’s bothered to go back to some of my earlier, angrier posts that were poorly written in drunken, hate-filled spurts of embittered rage – will know exactly how I feel about my ex-wife, so I don’t want to retread old ground here. The short version of the story is a familiar one, and one I share with the woman I wish I’d married to begin with – but the really short version can be summarized in just four words: What was I thinking?! (The really, really short version takes just two words, but the FCC won’t let me use them.)

Anyway, we sat in Trey’s room and watched the accursed video of my Huge Mistake, with Brittany seated on the uncomfortable plastic wedgie of his Smart Cycle X-Treme while I lounged in a fuzzy pink circular chair thing. As I said, it was a surreal experience – not only because the whole thing felt like watching a horror movie where you’re yelling at the stupid character on screen and urging him to not open the damned door because the killer’s standing on the other side with a really big knife and a surly disposition, but because I was sitting next to my wife, watching myself marry someone else. It was unsettling to see vows pledged that I knew would be broken and promises made that were never kept and that sort of thing, but it was downright eerie to know that Brittany was seeing it all unfold from the perspective of an earlier me, back when I was under the illusion of the fairy tale and made stupid by Love Goggles of +10 Ignorance.

I wanted to keep hitting fast forward, but she wanted to keep watching. Mostly, I think she was enjoying mocking my ex-wife’s insincerity and freakishly poofy hair that I’d never even noticed before, but I know some of it must have stung. I know I didn’t like watching the kissing parts, at least – and nobody wants to see their spouse smooching on someone else. Still, Brittany got a kick out of playing armchair body language expert as she pointed out each time my ex rolled her eyes or looked away from the preacher man when he was speaking unsettling words about faithfulness and devotion. The funny part is, I can’t say she was entirely wrong with her observations. Although I certainly didn’t see it at the time, watching the rehearsed machinations of my ex-wife was itself an education in well-oiled sociopathy. The flash of a canned smile here, the practiced tilt of her head there, and you’d never notice the blank, emotionless face nestled between all of the pre-programmed poses. It was kinda creepy.

So anyway, that’s what we did tonight. We watched me get married and then joked around as we considered tacking on an addendum to the video when it ended with “And they lived happily ever after…” We laughed about it all, then settled into a long and comforting discussion about the early days of our relationship, which was still tinged by the stain of our mutually failed marriages at the time. Finding some old e-mails and papers in preparation for court certainly contributed to some of our conversation, but mostly it wasn’t about my ex or her ex, and was instead focused on wishing we’d just not been so naive when we were younger. And, while I’d be perfectly fine with hopping into a flux-capacitor equipped DeLorean to go back and warn myself of the dangers on the road ahead, I’m very glad there isn’t such a thing as a time machine. For all of the misery we’ve had to endure at the hands of Brittany’s ex, I’m thankful that there’s no way for her to slide a banana peel down Mr. Fusion’s gullet and go back in time to erase him from her life, simply because I don’t want to imagine a world where Trey goes all Marty McFly transparent before poofing out of existence while on stage at the Under The Sea dance. That would suck, even if she did hop into the future on her way back to the present to pick up an auto-drying jacket, some power-laced Nikes and a HoverBoard.

That wraps things up for today. Be sure to come back Tuesday for the first half of the next chapter in the serialization of my novel, Snowflakes In Autumn. See you then!

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.