True Story©… Is this thing on?

 

     I’m a middle child…
When that is brought up in certain company, “but you’re a twin” is a response, but I am the oldest twin in birth order out of three of us total.  I am a middle child and that is absolutely a thing whether accepted or not.

     I say all that to say that I am pretty damn used to people forgetting to pay attention to me.  Not to cry into my beer over or anything, as it is 7:30am and work starts in a few minutes.

     My wife has grown scared of introducing me to the uninitiated…
“Why?” I hear you asking.  Because I have grown SO accustomed to people either not listening to what I am saying, or even still not taking any of it seriously when they have listened that I tend to blurt things out as if I have automatically inferred that they won’t be listening – or worse still, I will say some wild shit to test them.  Not necessarily to troll people or anything, but really just to entertain myself in this fucked up world.

     I will never forget when she fully realized that, while I am usually pretty quiet in social situations, I am far from shy.
She is the type who will quickly meet up with her friends and converse standing outside of the car for 637 minutes until I die of starvation a while.  Not one to be rude, if it is someone who doesn’t know me then I have to get out and be introduced.  After introduction, these humanoids usually engage me in smalltalk before turning back to the wife person.  Unfortunately, that means that I have now become a participant in the conversation.
One such instance was late summer a few years ago, 2016.  I was helping her assemble her classroom and we bumped into another teacher on the way out of the school.

Wife: “HEY [name I have since forgotten]!”

Coworker: “Hi [wife name redacted]”

Wife: “How was your summer?”

Coworker: “It was great, we went to Idaho to visit my husband’s family.”

Wife: “I know you looooved that.”

Coworker: “Like a toothache.”

Me (quietly): “Because you da ho.”

Wife: “…”

Coworker: “Is this the ‘mister’ you were telling us about in the spring?”

Wife: “Yes…  We actually just went to LegoLand Florida for his daughter’s birthday a few weeks ago.”

Coworker: “How cool is that?”

Me (smiling): “Cool?  Have you been to Florida? It was--…”

Wife: “It was amazing.”

Coworker: “He’s funny.”

Wife: “Don’t encourage him.”

 

     The rest of the exchange was some teacher shit that sent me back to playing with my phone until they were done.  I was half listening for my chance to interject an “I hate when that happens” or something of the sort, but the opportunity never presented itself.
Needless to say, back in the car, my not-then-but-now-wife warned me that I was getting a whooping when we got home.

 

     Fast forward…
In pursuit of her crafts, my now-wife (same woman as above, but we’s married now!) spends a lot of time and money in crafts shops and because although she has been a licensed driver since forever ago, I am forced to drive under the threat of one of those whoopings.
One such trip took place in the dog days of this past summer.  Not to let you know anything about me but I am a cheap ass who does not believe in wasting gas letting the car idle when I don’t have to, like to the point where I don’t even like drive-thrus.  With that in mind, I braved the million degree August bible belt heat, getting out of the car and going into the shop with her one time.
“Now when we get in here, don’t embarrass me,” she said in no uncertain terms.  I responded with fake crocodile tears “you’re ashamed of me?”  She didn’t respond.

     Inside of the store, I found an available seat and played Words With Friends on my phone.
[Phlip note: Zynga should cut the check as much as I mention them in here]
She butterflied throughout the store – it was really quite entertaining – stopping to ask me how I thought some things smelled but mostly allowing me to leave her to it.  Not to let you all in on anything more than you need to know about me, but I try to see to it that we eat like we’re supposed to during the week and the weekend are our hang loose time.  This was a Saturday morning and I had made one of my decadent breakfasts, complete with two people running through two whole pots of coffee while we sat on the couch watching Cheaters before we hit the streets.
I had to stand up from my perch and find a shopkeep…

Me: “Excuse me.”

Clerk: “Yes sir?”

Me: “Restroom, please?”

Clerk: “Excuse?”

Me: “Do you have a restroom for customers?”

Clerk: “Oh…  Yes, it is through that door on the left, then the second door on the right.”

See…  I had to explain to her more than once that I needed to use the head, so I was suspicious of whether or not she was actually listening.  I needed to test this theory.

Me: “Cool.  Thanks, I gotta go make clay.”

In how she DIDN’T turn white as a ghost, she either wasn’t listening or has as fucked up a sense of humor as I do.
I am notoriously shy about where I will shit, like to the point where I will go home from some people’s houses and then return, so I had no intentions on shitting in this woman’s bathroom.  That said, I was not in there long.  I washed my hands like a reasonable human being and returned to my wife trying to explain my fucked up sense of humor to the lady while she checked out with my debit card.

 

     These are but a sampling of the shit I might do or say in my pursuit of entertainment in a fucked-up world that has never actually listened to me.  I would reach a level of TL;DR too fast to chronicle the shit I do, as I do this shit every day.
My wife, though?  She won’t take me anywhere nowadays.
I assuredly do NOT have a future in standup comedy though.