The Special Project

My Boy Scout troop was the “nerd” troop of the area. We weren’t the “do push ups until your arms fall off” troop that was led by the ex-Marine and we weren’t the “We’re staying in the woods until our own stink drives us out” troop like some of the others. It was, all in all, a pretty decent group of guys.

One of the people I met in that group was someone who went on to be a friend of mine. (We ended up taking a computer course together on TRS-80 Model 1’s which gives you an idea of the timeframe.) He was a couple of years ahead of me in High School and his younger sister was a couple of years younger. For a while she was the communal “kid sister” of our group of friends. We’ll get back to her in a minute or two. A key point to know is that for years her nickname was that flightless bird in the Antarctic that looks like it's wearing a tuxedo.

After college he was driving home from Cincinnati one night and had a horrible car wreck. He was in a coma for a while and most of us who knew him before the accident would say that it brought about some immediate changes. In the weeks following the girl I took to my Senior prom, the Prom Date, latched on to him to nurse him back to health.

I learned a hard lesson from this. I was very vocal among our friends that I thought she was using his weakened state to get in close to him. (This is the woman who had the nervous breakdown in my high school Anthropology class and had some other issues as well.) Like a fool I didn’t conceal my thoughts and it’s one of the hardest lessons I ever learned about keeping my mouth shut. Within 6 months, they were engaged and married and I wasn’t invited to the wedding.

Word had gotten back to them and I was the only one of our group not asked to attend. (I swear I told this story somewhere else around here but can’t find it.) I brought it on myself but it really, really sucked at the time. It also taught me to wish people nothing but the best and shut the heck up.

Sadly, they divorced within a year or so. He had come home one night when he wasn’t expected and heard “noise” from the bedroom. After glancing in and getting an eyeful he went into the kitchen and just sat down in the dark. A while, and I mean a while, later his wife came into the kitchen to get some cold water from the refrigerator. To say she was surprised is an understatement. To say the other woman was surprised is also an understatement.

He recovered and went on to a good life. He re-married another friend of mine and though things didn’t work out in the long run they have a beautiful daughter. His life is good. (Although he is the goofball who purchased the lap dance for me the night before the wedding that was administered by a woman in excess of 250 lbs.) His Halloween parties are killer.

His 1st ex, my former Prom Date, is now on her third marriage. The less said the better.

Back to the flightless waterfowl…

My friend’s sister went on to have a pretty normal life: college, married and kids. Then a few years ago I started hearing rumors.

Normally rumors tend to wash up on my shore and just die in the sun. I’m so far removed from people in some of these circles that it just doesn’t make sense to even care. I just hope people are happy and don’t think anymore of it. I now operate under the “You’re adults! Go figure it out!” rule with the assumption that if they don’t know any better their mother and father just didn’t do a very good job of raising them.

None the less the rumors started. Most of the rumors centered around her being involved in a local community theatre group.

Community theatre groups are odd things. The smaller the group the weirder they tend to be. They draw all sorts of egos and strange things happen. (Maybe I’ll do a guide for Jack at some point.) It’s not somewhere that you should expect people to behave rationally all of the time.

The last time I was home the rumors were pretty thick. I heard them from a couple of unrelated sources and it’s pretty depressing. One person said the husband, whom I’ve met a couple of times and seemed very nice to me, needed someone to put a sign in his yard that says “clue” so that he could have one.

When people come to you with gossip you have to decide what you want to do with it. I tend not to pass things along and some others broadcast them everywhere. No matter what you do with the gossip you have to decide if it's true or not at some point. Unfortunately I had witnessed some things over time that had led me to privately think that the odds were they were true.

That's why I wasn't surprised when I got the word tonight:

First part: She’s told him that she had an affair. With another woman.

Ok. A little non-conventional but at least he knows now. I have a low opinion of this sort of thing but telling him was a step in the right direction. I'm not forgiving her just saying that at least she's come clean.

The second part: She’s disappeared. With the kids.

Poof! Gone with no forwarding info and a frantic father who can't find his two children.

If I had anything to do with it her nickname going forward would be Dodo. *sigh*

I hope the part about the kids isn't true but my source hasn't been wrong before. I just hope it all works out. For everyone.