She was different

Probably in her 20s; the image that remained in my head until the very end. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

—“What about your wife?” friends ask.
Every time I mention how pleasant it is to strike sparks with pretty ladies, “what about your wife?”
“She was different,” I always say. “Raised by her mother to be a frump.”
And I think I did convince her she could be pretty. In her picture above, she’s pretty.
“You get rid of them batwings (glasses), and let your hair grow, and you’ll look a lot prettier.”
Her mother was aghast. My wife switched to contacts, and away from tightly-curled permanents.
Maybe not gorgeous, but no longer a frump.
Her prettiness faded with age, but the marbles remained = I could talk to her, and she understood everything I said almost immediately.
If she didn’t, she wanted me to explain, i.e. she didn’t push me off. I might say something that turned on a lightbulb in her head.
I think of two other girls similar to my wife; that is, they wanted to hear whatever I said.
Neither girl was as well-suited for me as the one I married.
My bereavement-counselor tells me I’m lucky to have found a wife who could accept someone as messed up as I was, and probably still am.
“Similar childhoods,” I always say. With her it was her mother, but with me it was both parents, although mainly my father.
“I don’t wanna look like my mother!” she’d wail as she got older.
“Ya haven’t growled at me yet,” I’d say. (When I first met her mother, she actually growled at me: “what in the world does she ever see in him?” Then “look what the cat dragged in!”)
I think all our parents were upset they couldn’t determine our marriage partners. My mother had the perfect wife picked out for me who I couldn’t stand, plus her mother had the perfect husband picked out who she also couldn’t stand.
That guy dated her once in college, and scared her to death demonstrating the 100-mph potential of his ’57 Chevy.
So why are all my recent encounters with pretty ladies so thrilling? We laugh, and smile at each other, and talk, talk, talk, and talk some more, and they light up the woods with their smile.
But I’ve yet to meet a pretty lady comparable to, or who could replace, my wife.
So I been thinkin’, despite being told at the Mighty Mezz that thinkin’ was dangerous. Recently a friend who was mad-as-Hell at me told me she was thinking, so I suggested we call the fire department.
Every one of those pretty ladies I struck sparks with counters my childhood.
“NO PRETTY LADY WILL SMILE AT/TALK TO/ASSOCIATE WITH OR HANG OUT WITH YOU!”
And Yrs Trly has gotten so he can charm a pretty lady into striking sparks. I used to be scared, but now I’m so used to doing it, and I’m having so much success, I probably do it more than I should.
Some of my best friends are female: we smile and talk and laugh, and thereby make each other feel good. Men are less likely; they’re always pullin’ that macho crap on ya.
These recent friendships with pretty ladies are extremely pleasant, but only because they’re countering my childhood.

• My beloved wife of 44&1/2 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I still miss her. BEST friend I ever had, and after my childhood I needed one. She actually liked me.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired 15 years ago. BEST job I ever had. I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well. That defect was repaired.)