Being an idiot saved my life!

Back before I was married and living in Margaritaville, back before I was dreaming of getting the hell out of the miserable low-class suburb I was squatting in to the west and and south outside of Boston, I was a commercial lobsterman, dirt poor, and sailed on an oil tanker in the wintertime. I lived with my two roommates, Johnny Sparks, an ironworker, and Spinach, a political hack at the time,  in a house we called 'The Pickle Jar.'   It was a pretty good life, but lonely at times, so I had a girlfriend and it was OK.
       My ex was a nice person. A professional, with a very healthy high-paying state job. I was in an honest-to-God stable, adult relationship. It was... pleasant, in the way that a businesses' foyer is pleasant, like a weekend outing sponsored by your employer is pleasant.
 Like golf is pleasant. That kind of pleasant. 

         My ex didn't like my friends. Oh, Johnny and Spinach she tolerated. My other friends, drinking buddies, not so much. She hated that I was a lobsterman with an underutilized STEM education, although I think she was attracted to my passion for the sea. Not that she shared it, but I don't think she had ever been exposed to someone who was professionally pursuing his lifelong dreams, and was actually good enough to make a living in doing so.

        I didn't know it, but I was unhappy. I'm not someone who can tolerate pleasant very long. I'd rather have challenge and struggle, and spectacular success or failure than mediocrity. And that's what my relationship was.

      One weekend my ex wanted to introduce me to one of her good friends, and so we went bowling, meeting at an alley close to her house, north of Boston. I took Spinach with me, because he was single too, and because he had more tolerance for pleasant than Johnny Sparks.

 Unsurprisingly enough, it was a pleasant night.
    We ended up going to a restaurant for drinks after. We piled into my ex's sedan, because my truck stank of bait, being a lobsterman's truck. After we had our drinks, my ex drove us back to my truck. I had to be up at 4:30 to go fishing, anyhow, and it was a 45 min drive home. Must have been about 9pm, and it was dark.

 And that's when I saw it. 

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Now, let me break scene here and remind you, if you missed the constant stream of dick and fart jokes here on this blog, that  I have the maturity of a 12-year old, and normally know enough to keep it under wraps in polite company. I'm serious, too. The guys I work with are friggin' saints for putting up with my monkey ass. I'm VERY well educated, very articulate, very crude, vulgar and can turn on and off the social graces at will, though sometimes it happens at random, too, which is what happened on the night I'm talking about.
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   Now, my ex, being a pleasant but somewhat snobby, selfish person (the spoiled only child of a high-end business executive), stuck Spinach and I in the back seat of her sedan so she could chat with her friend. I was at my peak strength at this point in my life, and at my peak size, too, so it was a pretty miserable ride.
     We were passing through Peabody MA, one of Boston's northern suburbs (and an unknown to me. Being from the South Shore, the North Shore was to be distrusted and avoided). The businesses were still open, and I was looking out the window to see where the hell we were.

 And there it was. It didn't register for a couple of seconds.

Seriously. 

    That is an actual liquor store, located in the heart of Puritan Country, outside of Sodom, Boston, Massachusetts.

 ...I saw the sign, and I lost my shit. I'm talking, grabbed my buddy, then pointed and brayed like a donkey. I was laughing so hard at the unexpected humor that no noises were coming out of my mouth for lack of breath.  It took me until we got to my truck to stop giggling, and even then, after an exasperated and somewhat cold  goodnight from my ex, Spinach and I were still laughing about it.

  I failed to display the proper deference and gravitas with my ex and her friend, and that night was the beginning of the end for us. I heard about how embarrassed she was for quite a while. It was not pleasant.

 I still laugh when I see that picture. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife wouldn't get the imagery or the double-entendre without a full explanation, but she'd roll her eyes and chuckle, mostly at me acting like a child, but she's got a great sense of humor, and would never put me in sexile for irrational exuberance in front of her friends.

 At any rate, a year or so, I forget how long, after things wrapped up with my ex, I met my wife to be, and while the dick and fart jokes don't flow like wine when I'm home, out of respect for my wife, I'll sometimes get a giggle out of her at least.




Alternate Title: How Alcohol was both the problem and the solution!