[Note: This post was originally published on
November 12, 2012.]
I was fourteen then and in the ninth grade.
Back in the Mid-Jurassic Period, students were
allowed to leave the school grounds for lunch. On that particular day, I was
walking to the diner with a friend who was in the eighth grade. I’ll call her
Lily, but that wasn’t her real name.
We were halfway there when Lily stopped in the
middle of the street, grabbed my arm, pulled me closer, and whispered in my
ear, “See that guy coming toward us.”
How could I not see that guy coming toward us?
He looked nasty—scowl on his face, black leather jacket, tight jeans. The word hood
popped into my head.
“That’s [Tough Guy],” Lily said. Although I
hadn’t formally been introduced to Tough Guy, I knew some things about him, and
they were not good things. He was a person whose reputation preceded him.
“He had to get married,” Lily whispered as he
strutted past us. “Now he has to get divorced because he has to get married
again.”
Yikes, I thought. “That’s crazy,” I said. “And
anyway, maybe you shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
Actually, Lily sort of heard right. The timing
was a little off though. Tough Guy did get divorced within a few months. And he
did have to get married again, but that happened about five years later. He
married Lily.
Postscript
I was formally introduced to Tough Guy during my
senior year of high school. By that time we had several mutual friends,
including my friend Kate.
Lily and Tough Guy eventually divorced. She
remarried and moved out of state. Tough Guy never remarried. Maybe he thought
two marriages and two divorces were enough.
Sadly, both Lily and Tough Guy died much too
young. Lily was a likeable person. Tough Guy, not so likeable most of the time.
However, there was an evening when I decided I liked him a little better.
One Friday evening, back in the Late Jurassic
Period, I was watching Kate’s children when Tough Guy showed up at her house. I
didn’t realize he had been drinking, or I would have told him to go away. With
the kids there, I didn’t want to provoke him, so I figured I’d let him stay as
long as he behaved.
Yes, he did behave.
I don’t remember what our original conversation
was about, but after a while, Tough Guy started talking about the son he had
with his first wife. The son, I’ll call him “Wayne,” had been a toddler when he
was adopted by his mother’s new husband.
Apparently Wayne, now a teenager, recently had
learned that Tough Guy was his biological father. Wayne telephoned Tough Guy
and asked him if he was his real dad. Tough Guy told him, “I may be your
biological dad, but that man you live with, the one who takes care of you, he’s
your real dad.”
