Sympathy For The Devil

Last week, I out to dinner with an old friend and we discovered that we both know a short, roly-poly balding guy who is certainly no Tatum Channing in the looks department. My friend had worked with him, and Wingman had coached with him.  Her observation about him was "That pig." He should rot in hell for the way he behaves." (He hit on her while being married to a nice, roly-poly woman.)

Funny thing is that I had the same experience with that guy and had wished for the same outcome for him. But if you were to ask the priest who was my high school religion teacher, he'd say it was my friend's fault and mine.  But not Roly-Poly's because according to him, men are innocent of all actions when it comes to being around women.  Which makes women responsible for everything from the Kennedy assassination to global warming. And me responsible for the bad judgement of men for over 30 years...

The Bucket List

Admittedly, we were dirty fighters while we were married. I was the queen of sarcasm, while Wingman's weapon of choice was blaming. He gave up playing in a band to marry me, his film editing career in NYC to be close to the kids and worked a job he particularly didn't enjoy to allow us to live the lives we lived.  I'm not going to say that his arguments were totally unfounded, yet I would counter that everyone makes compromises and sacrifices in life.

When Wingman died, I thought about all the things we said we were going to do and never did.  Early on, we were fortunate enough to be able to travel because of one of my jobs.  But looking back, there were a lot of years that I can't remember a single trip, vacation or otherwise important occasion.  That's sad for both us and for the kids.