Far Fetched

I started to write something on 9/11 and then decided I just didn't want to. 

I woke up with a headache this morning that I think is a result of sitting in one of Judi's uncomfortable chairs yesterday. It strains my neck and the muscle ache leads to a headache. So I've been dealing with that all day. Fun.

We went out for donuts yesterday and each got two instead of three. I had a triple chocolate and a red velvet. Dave got a french toast donut and I forget what else. I could only eat one and a half of mine (I gave half the red velvet to Dave). They were way too sugary, but they were very tasty.

What else happened yesterday? We went over to my brother's apartment in the morning so I could give him a haircut on his front step, everyone masked of course. And we're all vaccinated (although my vaccinations were completed seven months ago, so I'm sure the protection I have from them is starting to wane). I though the haircut turned out pretty well, actually, considering that the only other person whose hair I've cut is Dave's (and my own, of course). My brother will have to clean up around the sideburns where I couldn't reach without taking off his mask, but otherwise, it was fine.

After that, we came home so I could change clothes and take a shower, then we went for donuts.  While Dave went off to visit his mother, I spent the rest of the day at Judi's doing laundry and watching terrible cable TV (switching between an Indiana Jones movie marathon, whatever was on the Food network, and a Law & Order: SVU marathon). I also watched several episodes of a Japanese drama on Netflix called Love & Fortune about a thirty-one-year-old woman who falls in love and cheats on her boyfriend with a fifteen-year-old high school student. Seems farfetched?

I had a friend in high school who ended up doing something similar, only she was twenty-four-years-old and the kid was fourteen when they met. She was married at the time (she met her husband when they were in college and married a year or so later) and her husband (who was also at least a couple of years younger than she was) was an exchange student in Germany. She had stayed in their college town even though she had graduated, because her husband still had a year of college to go after he returned from Germany. And one day, my friend walked into a coffee shop, saw this fourteen-year-old boy, ended up befriending him (and then some) and decided that she was going to leave her husband. There's a lot of hand waving in there to obscure what was really happening, I'm sure. But at some point, she called her husband in Germany and told him she wanted a divorce and told him the reason why. Of course, he came home immediately and her mother, who she also told, went to where she living in Oregon to try to talk some sense into her. It didn't work. 

She held fast, got divorced, and with the permission of this kid's parents (!), ended up courting him. Turns out it's easy to court a fourteen year old. She bought him a skateboard and a guitar with an amp--yes, really--using an inheritance she had gotten after her grandmother died. When the kid turned eighteen and she was twenty-eight, she married him.

The first time I met him was at their wedding (which they held in her parents' yard). He was a waifish blonde boy, very shy. (I found out later he was on the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum.) When I went over to introduce myself, I said something like, "I heard you two wrote your own vows. Wow! That's great. I'd be afraid I'd get nervous and forget them." I meant it as a joke. When I said it, he inhaled sharply and closed his eyes and then just shut down, like, completely. Just stopped speaking or responding. I was, like, "Uh. Okay. Well, good luck." And then I just walked away.

It was a strange wedding. My friend had always been one of those Renaissance Faire types and she and her fiance and his friends (who were all either still in high school or had just graduated from high school) were dressed in things that looked like they had emptied out the costume loft of the local high school theater. The rest of us who were in our late 20s to early 30s were dressed, you know, like normal people going to a backyard wedding. I don't remember the ceremony (I think it involved a lot of candles and flower crowns) but the reception was terrible. It was clear that half the crowd were not of drinking age, so there was a lot of excited tittering from them when they were served wine with dinner as though they were adults.  We all sat at outdoor tables with a catering table across the driveway. They had a woman cook and serve steak and kidney pie. The woman was disappointed when no one wanted seconds. After the cake was cut and served, one of the high schoolers (who was very proud to have been appointed to some position of authority) announced that the wedding was officially over and we were all ushered out.

Fun, right? 

So I guess what I'm saying is: I don't necessarily think that this romance between a thirty-one year old and a  fifteen year old is actually that far-fetched.