And Yet I Married Him Anyway

Jul 09, 2019

I am 12 years old and just barely withstanding seventh-grade Homemaking 101 in a sweltering Texas classroom. Our teacher, Mrs. Smithson, is pontificating on how, “A hamburger served with cheese, lettuce and tomato is a complete and perfect meal all by itself according to today’s food pyramid standards,” and because it is 1978, we believe her. Sitting in front of me, my friend Anne dutifully jots down this nugget of wisdom in her new Trapper Keeper notebook -- you remember -- the one with the grey kitten on it. Oh, how I want that notebook.

My husband is sitting behind me, blowing spitwads into my absurdly permed hair through a straw he snagged from the cafeteria, and it is really pissing me off. My hair is supposed to look like Olivia Newton John’s at the end of Grease when wholesome Sandy has transformed into a sexy bad girl, but on me it looks more like a strawberry-blonde poodle is nesting atop my skull and the nasty spitwads aren’t doing it any favors. It’s okay though, the hair is not the story. The story is that in 7^th grade, my husband is very, very, very annoying. And yet, I married him anyway.

Not back then of course. Even in rural South Texas the locals would have raised an eyebrow or possibly even furrowed their brows at 7th-grade nuptials.

No, I didn’t marry him then, it didn’t seem like a sensible decision yet. I thought I should at least wait until he had completed his 30 days in the Scared Straight program for being caught selling weed to Aleta Galloway out of his locker in 7^th grade. Prison life didn’t scare away the crush he had on Aleta, and it must not have scared him entirely straight either, since we still have the “souvenir” Texas State Penitentiary shirt he stole to document his experience. It later became one of our daughter’s favorite wardrobe pieces when she herself was 12 years old.

It still didn’t seem sensible to marry him when we dated briefly in high school either, even though he was the only white guy in the Mexican mafia’s upper-level management as a mere sophomore (brag) and could afford to buy me all the Mr. Gatti’s pizza my hungry little heart desired.

I didn’t want to marry him until my parents had time to rebound from being summoned into the police station to view local law enforcement’s photo collage featuring their daughter cavorting about town with this known delinquent. As scrapbooking goes, they were far ahead of their time. I mean, it was a seriously well-crafted collage with captions and labels and strings connecting various miscreants to their misdeeds in a delicate web of wrongdoing. Chef’s kiss to the detectives.

I continued to not marry him right through our senior year of high school because by that time, he had dumped me for SlutLayla (not her real name) and was busy being Nacho Varga decades before Better Call Saul introduced the rest of the world to the charming right hand thug character. He also had to rescue his older sister who kept getting stalked and occasionally kidnapped by one of her many psycho ex-boyfriends. Meanwhile, my days were packed with the Golden Girls drill team, co-editing the yearbook, fending off crippling panic attacks, successfully sparring with a few bouts of suicidal depression and an ample dose of college prep angst. Clearly, neither of us could devote much time or attention to marriage just yet.

But later, after our high school graduation, once his ambitious criminal record had been expunged by his somewhat unscrupulous “criminal lawyer” (again, Saul Goodman except with a Southern drawl) and after he had traded cocaine and heroin for gin and then traded gin for beer (lots and lots of beer), THAT is when I began to toss the marriage idea around in my head.

By the time marriage seemed like a sound proposition, it was 1989, we were 22 years old, and we had been best friends for 10 years. I knew about all the transgressions, fuckups and felonies, and yet, I married him anyway. Because I also knew he was the kindest, most loyal, thoughtful and funny person I’d ever known. I knew he was the absolute love of my life. Three decades and endless adventures later, I resolutely know that marrying that pain-in-the-ass, spitwad-blowing boy was the best fucking decision I ever made.