What Was That?

Something unexpected happened over the weekend. Something I assumed would be quite innocent turned out to be an evening-shattering event. At one point my wife and I looked at each other, each wiping streaming tears from our faces, and wondered aloud what was happening to us. One of us had to keep swallowing, her throat burning, to keep from balls-out bawling. 

It started when Walter chicken-pecked the first few notes—"It's. Time. To..."—on Kermit the Frog's dusty piano.

There was no coming back from it.

If you haven't seen The Muppets, let me tell you, that movie wasn't messing around. It lifted my wife and me over its head, cracked our backs over its knee, and left us to crawl to a payphone to call for help. The Muppets’ studio in ruins?! The Muppets no longer friends?! No longer relevant?! It took everything we valued and loved in our childhoods and set them on fire right in front of our faces. 

And then Kermit and Miss Piggy had to go and sing Rainbow Connection as a duet. You might as well have beaten a basket of puppies before our eyes the way we carried on.

When my wife asked me, “What’s wrong with us?” I tried to say something about our reactions maybe being linked to our youth being over, how we’d never feel that joyfully light again, that we’d never feel so over-the-top connected to anything like the Muppets again, but couldn't without breaking down. 

So I took a minute. 

With tears still rolling down my face, I settled on, "I'm so glad we didn't see that in the theater.”

And that's how we left it: laughing about being the two adult women in the audience who couldn't manage to detach themselves from the fuzzy friends who meant more to them than just entertaining puppets.

Slapping Bitches

It has been awhile since I've had an overwhelming urge to open-hand slap someone across the face. Plenty have been considered--Kim Kardashian after she took the "sanctity of marriage" and poured expensive champagne all over it; Newt Gingrich because, well, he's Newt Gingrich; Donald Trump as he struggles to remain relevant--but it wasn't until last week, when Mitt Romney insulted me by saying I'm looking for gifts from Obama, that I started taking practice swings at pillows.

So you're the candidate who wouldn't make it rain and that's what sunk you.

Sounds like something a little bitch would say.

Let me lay it out for you, Mitt. The only gift I'll receive for not voting for you is not having you referred to as President of the United States for the next four years. Even if you'd offered the gift of extending the Bush tax cuts and I was a millionaire, it still wouldn't be a bigger gift than that. To suggest otherwise is egotistically irresponsible.

It takes a true little bitch to not admit playing a part in his own loss. But a true little bitch tries everything he can to keep his starting quarterback position on a team that wants to make the rules.

Little bitches, man. You just can't get close enough to give them a gift of your own.

Love in One Act

ACT I
SUNDAY MORNING, FALL 2012

The McHeberly kitchen. Standing in the thimble-sized kitchen is Whack-A-Muse, the oldest member of the household. She is finishing up the dishes, when her wife walks down the hallway and stops at the end of the kitchen counter. She has a white and pink electric razor in her hand.

Wife   You want me to shave your mustache?

Whack-A-Muse  (looking at the razor) You didn't just use that on your--

Wife   No!

WAM   Were you embarrassed to be seen with me at the play last night?

Wife   Not at all.

WAM   It's okay if you were. Maybe the way I was standing under the light caught--

Wife   (laughs) No. I just had these out and figured, you know.

WAM  (without hesitation) Sure! But should we get out of the kitchen?

Wife   Yes. Let's go in the living room, in the light.

WAM follows Wife into the living room. Wife turns, takes WAM by the shoulders and positions her just so in a block of sunshine. Wife turns on the electric lady razor and raises it to WAM's upper lip. WAM stretches her mouth to make it easier on Wife, and to ensure the tiny black hairs are erased.

Wife   (satisfied, Wife turns off the razor) There.

WAM   How's my eyebrows look? The ones that grow into my hair?

Wife turns the razor back on and starts shaving the side of WAM's forehead.

Once Wife is finished, WAM uses her pointer finger and rubs between her eyebrows. Without a word, Wife turns the razor back on.

WAM  I don't know if I trust you shaving between my eyebrows.

Wife   I know, but trust me. It'll be okay.

WAM   You can't shave straight down. You gotta angle it. I don't want you to shave off half my eyebrows like you--

Wife   (firmly) I know. It'll be fine.

Wife, again, raises the razor and delicately shaves between WAM's eyebrows.

WAM   Better?

Wife   Yes.

They kiss.

Big Fucking Deal

On the eve of the election, I'm feeling all kinds of, well, feelings. My belief system aligns more with President Obama’s, but truthfully, nothing in my daily life changes, regardless of who is steering the ship. But, this year, things feel different. For the first time in our nation's history, the sitting President, Barack Obama, thinks I have the right to get married. And that feels like a Big Fucking Deal.

When I excitedly asked a family member if she'd heard the President’s announcement, all she had to say was, "Well yeah! He wants those votes!"

Right. Votes. Forget that it took 223 years for the President of the United States to “want” a gay's vote. Forget that no president before Obama has ever supported gay marriage. Forget that the family member’s daughter is one of those.

My own mother reducing Obama's support of gay marriage as an attempt to garner more votes blatantly shows how easily the love I have for my wife can be dismissed.

And I'm fucking over it.

Legalizing gay marriage makes our love recognizable, something people can understand and wrap their heads around. Yes, it is just like The Bachelorette but the Bachelorette chooses a woman instead of a man. That’s a Big Fucking Deal.

So thank you, Mr. President, for telling our nation that, yes, love is love. Thank you for being the voice of profound change in my life. And thank you for being the only man I want (in the White House).

Because, like it or not, my life is a Big Fucking Deal.