MARRIED MAN WALKABOUT

Married Man: My wife doesn’t like doing what I like doing so I’m taking a trip.

Me: Sounds like fun.

MM: Just me and my dog.

Me: Even better. How long will you be gone?

MM: Two to five years.

 

I walk my dog on a loop through the neighborhood.

She’s a good girl with a peculiar habit.

One house on the path has six signs to remind dog walkers his yard isn’t a dog dump.

Why does my dog wait for the sidewalk and street in front of that house to do her  business?

I think it’s too damn funny, but not the day the guy in the house decided to cut loose on me.

He came at me with anger and threats.

I chalked it up to either a bad day, or he was just a jackass looking for someone to show how much of a jackass he could be.

My dog and I have never set foot in his yard, but he acted as if I’d dumped a weeks worth of poo-pickup on his doorstep and lit it on fire.

The highlight was him telling me, “I know where you live.”

Since I’m a sweetheart until it’s time to do something else, I reminded him where I lived and said, “Be sure and wave when you walk past.”

In true jackass form that made him more angry.

 

Months Later At Night

The married man talking the walkabout talk was the same guy, except more friendly than I remembered.

I didn’t remind him.

He was taking his big truck and his big trailer and his dog out on the road indefinitely, not 2 to 5 years.

His plan was living off the grid, prospecting for gold, and seeing the sights of the Southwestern states.

It’s a great plan, dog traveling like John Steinbeck.

 

Travels with Charley is a 1960 travelogue written by John Steinbeck.

Its based on his own experiences as he drove across the U.S. in his camper-wielding truck named after Don Quixotes horse Rocinante, along with his travel companion, a French poodle named Charley.

Claiming to be “In Search of America,” he makes a rather distant trek from his home in New York, to the California Peninsula, across the Southwest and back.

 

I had a hat pulled down. Maybe that’s why he didn’t recognize me?

Or maybe he was still planning things and wanted to talk it out.

I listened to the late-life wanderlust, the guy’s younger than me but looks older, and did the figures in my head.

I figured he was leaving his wife and selling his house and making a return to who he remembers he used to be: A badass.

He wanted me to know how he backed four burly teamsters down in Chicago one time in his twenties, then a couple of years later  backing down four Navy Seals in Tijuana bar.

One 5’9″ man vs four men running 6’3″, 220lbs. Twice.

Me: Will you have personal protection on your trip.

MM: I’ve got a .44 and a 9mm along with my hunting rifles.

 

This cleared the picture up: He was looking for trouble, and it’s not married man trouble.

 

Married Man Trouble 

(This is the Life Writing part of the blog post.)

I’m a married man.

I’ve been married longer than I’ve done anything else.

That’s how married I am, and I’ve never been in trouble.

No ‘Let’s take a break;’ no ‘who was that on the phone’; no ‘I’ve found someone, let’s talk.’

My rule is ‘Skip the polite, mature, bullshit and get to the point.’

A walkabout for two to five years wouldn’t fly around my house.

My wife and kids would parrot me with their own version of ‘skip the bullshit and get to the point.’

If you are a married man with time on the clock, you need to take steps before you drift away never to return.

I met an old codger who said he still heard his wife’s voice ten years after their divorce, but it’s getting better.

Did I believe him? No.

Another old guy who ditched his wife had eight bottles of vodka in his freezer.

He said they had grown apart.

He poured some icy vodka and we toasted his good luck.

It made me wonder if his ex-wife had a freezer full of booze like him.

Did they have irreconsolable differences, or was it a drunken decision made on a two week bender?

I’m a married man who enjoys the fruits of my labor.

Labor? Because it isn’t easy all of the time.

It isn’t easy some of the time, but what is?

Instead of inventing a reason to breakup, find a way to make up. That’s what married men do.

If you’ve found someone who can tolerate you when you’re not at your best, and your kids don’t try to kill you, why not stick around?

Stick around for the sons and daughters in-law. Stick around for the grandkids.

Why give the new people a tired old story:

Your Granddad got tired and quit on us. He had other things to do and he’s better off doing it wherever he is instead of here.

How do you come back from that?

You don’t.

Stick around for the wife and make it work.