Jolene
I suppose, even though I never bothered to imagine the phone call, it was bound to happen some time during my six year enlistment. Luckily it happened this afternoon shortly after my last wisdom tooth was pulled and I was I high on Vicodin.
But let me backtrack:
A necessary discomfort of the Navy is standing duty. Duty differs markedly by pay grade, and because of this I am the assistant leader of Duty Section 9. The duty section leader I work for, a builder so skinny that in adolescence he must have had knees bigger than his thighs, tests my patience. We were in Cuba together. He lived across the hall and spent his nights listening to Jimmy Buffet or practicing his guitar, drinking Bud Light, and smoking on the balcony. He’s as nice a guy as I’ve met but his skin is ruddy, his lower lip protrudes to a laughable degree, he has a tough time with eye contact, and he’s not very smart. He was fired from his position on the bridge project, due to several severe and surprising errors, and relegated to the tool room so that no one would have to deal with him. He has an unattractive and overweight wife who he seems to adore and a beautiful baby girl, Annabelle, who always wears a cowgirl hat he bought her at Gymboree.
This evening this man’s wife called me and accused me of having an affair with her husband. Now, God bless this woman, because she must think her husband is attractive enough to seduce a warm blooded women in the service. I wanted to explain to her that I work with 650 swinging dicks and if I was going to have sex with one of them her husband would hover at the bottom of my list. And it’s not just because of his awkward appearance or lack of social skills; it’s mostly because he’s dumb (and, of course, because I’m happily married but in my drug-addled brain that really seemed beside the point). Instead of spewing my venom I assured her that nothing was going on, that we never spent time together, and that the handful of text messages that fueled her suspicion were strictly work related.
“You should scroll through his phone and read the text messages. Really, there’s nothing there. We don’t run together, go to the gym together, or drive around together.” (Why is love is so well exercised in my brain?)
“I don’t want to read them. I want to know why my husband won’t introduce me to his friends.”
“You know, I don’t go to command functions. So the reason you haven’t met me has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.”
“I don’t go to command functions either! WE DON’T LIVE THERE!”
“You know what, I didn’t even know that.”
“Well, and now I just found out your husband isn’t around either. That’s great.”
“No, he’s not here. But I have a puppy and my entire life revolves around her. I take her to class twice a week, spend time with friends who have dogs so she can play. And I have good girlfriends and I spend time with them.”
And the phone went dead.
Is my puppy talk really that boring?
On Monday, when I return to work (tomorrow is off), I’m going to calmly approach him in the smoke pit and submissively suggest he might want to think about weather or not his wife is suffering from post partum depression. It seems a proper resolution with this man I work for.
But let me backtrack:
A necessary discomfort of the Navy is standing duty. Duty differs markedly by pay grade, and because of this I am the assistant leader of Duty Section 9. The duty section leader I work for, a builder so skinny that in adolescence he must have had knees bigger than his thighs, tests my patience. We were in Cuba together. He lived across the hall and spent his nights listening to Jimmy Buffet or practicing his guitar, drinking Bud Light, and smoking on the balcony. He’s as nice a guy as I’ve met but his skin is ruddy, his lower lip protrudes to a laughable degree, he has a tough time with eye contact, and he’s not very smart. He was fired from his position on the bridge project, due to several severe and surprising errors, and relegated to the tool room so that no one would have to deal with him. He has an unattractive and overweight wife who he seems to adore and a beautiful baby girl, Annabelle, who always wears a cowgirl hat he bought her at Gymboree.
This evening this man’s wife called me and accused me of having an affair with her husband. Now, God bless this woman, because she must think her husband is attractive enough to seduce a warm blooded women in the service. I wanted to explain to her that I work with 650 swinging dicks and if I was going to have sex with one of them her husband would hover at the bottom of my list. And it’s not just because of his awkward appearance or lack of social skills; it’s mostly because he’s dumb (and, of course, because I’m happily married but in my drug-addled brain that really seemed beside the point). Instead of spewing my venom I assured her that nothing was going on, that we never spent time together, and that the handful of text messages that fueled her suspicion were strictly work related.
“You should scroll through his phone and read the text messages. Really, there’s nothing there. We don’t run together, go to the gym together, or drive around together.” (Why is love is so well exercised in my brain?)
“I don’t want to read them. I want to know why my husband won’t introduce me to his friends.”
“You know, I don’t go to command functions. So the reason you haven’t met me has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.”
“I don’t go to command functions either! WE DON’T LIVE THERE!”
“You know what, I didn’t even know that.”
“Well, and now I just found out your husband isn’t around either. That’s great.”
“No, he’s not here. But I have a puppy and my entire life revolves around her. I take her to class twice a week, spend time with friends who have dogs so she can play. And I have good girlfriends and I spend time with them.”
And the phone went dead.
Is my puppy talk really that boring?
On Monday, when I return to work (tomorrow is off), I’m going to calmly approach him in the smoke pit and submissively suggest he might want to think about weather or not his wife is suffering from post partum depression. It seems a proper resolution with this man I work for.
posted by Jessica at 20:37
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