Over the past 15 years or so, I have watched enough of the Sci-Fi Channel with Hubby that I can now speak intelligently about alternate time lines, disruptions of the Space Time Continuum, and the Butterfly Effect to hold my own in a group of Trekkie's. I mean, I don't have Spock ears or anything, for God's sake, but I'm pretty well versed. (Ok, I really do have Spock ears, but I don't WEAR them or anything. Very often.)
And it made me wonder...
What would my life be like now if, oh, say I'd married my high school sweetheart?
Let me give you a little background on... for the purposes of this post, let's call him Stud Muffin. See, Stud Muffin and I started "going together" at the tender age of 13, and we dated all through high school, and even into my first year of college. Stud Muffin had some things going for him. He was really, really hot. I mean, really hot. He was tall, and dark, and ripped, and he had a mullet that could melt butter. It was lust at first sight. And he always has some classic car or other in the works. Old souped up Novas and Chevelles were our typical date cars. But there were a few issues, shall we say. For one, he wasn't very smart. Not just "I'm having a hard time getting the answer to this algebra equation" not smart, but more like "I'm going to have to go to the class with the boy who drools and throws shit and humps the teacher" not smart. For two, his main ambition in life was to someday own his own junkyard, just like his big brother. It's like the redneck American Dream or something.
To say that Stud Muffin and I had little in common would be something of an understatement. However, we did manage to date for six years, which is longer than Hubby and I stayed married the first time. Go figure.
But I digress. I'm here to talk about what my life would have been like had I married Stud Muffin.
I can only imagine that he would have realized his lifelong dream of being the youngest junkyard owner in the tricounty area. We would have pulled our like-new double wide (only the best for his woman) near the property, in order to defend the 'Yard from would-be looters. I hear tell that a catalytic converter brings a pretty penny on the black market, and a man's got a right to defend what's HIS, by God.
My double wide would be painstakingly decorated with lace covered teddy bears, which would have all been crafted with love by Stud Muffin's Momma, who, by the way, would pull her somewhat smaller but no less stylishly appointed single wide into our back yard.
The babies would have come quickly and often, and would have been named nice biblical names like Luke, and Jacob, and Adam, and Michael, and Timothy, and Dale Earnhardt III... I suspect that Stud Muffin's potential virility would have only allowed for male children...
I'm sure I would have been a lovely housewifely type. I might have been "allowed" to help keep the books for the business, but likely not in any fashion that would have put me in the public eye. My leisure time activities would have been bingo with Stud Muffin's Momma on Thursdays, hosting yard sales on the weekends, and church every Sunday at the scary motor-oil-anointing church of his youth.
Evenings would have been spent quietly at home, listening to Keith Whitley and occasionally watching a rousing NASCAR race or UK basketball game.
And really, the whole point of this is so that the next time Hubby leaves his socks in a strange place, or that the Kid has a meltdown in the grocery store, I'm going to bite my tongue, smile, and thank whatever gods that are looking out for me that I am not in a position that I might think that old toilets make excellent lawn ornaments, and that I don't have to regularly clean grease spots out of the carpet.
