It Baffles Me

When it comes to selecting a life partner, I have always been puzzled when it comes to the question of why we choose the person we choose. As for myself, I can completely understand why not every woman on the planet would find me enrapturing. I have never followed society's guidelines concerning relationships. Heck, I break out in a cold sweat whenever I hear the word "marriage". It's been that way with me all my life. On top of that, I can get pretty silly sometimes, even annoyingly silly. On the other hand, I’d like to think that I am generally personable, considerate, and fairly even-tempered. There are a lot of guys that do not have those three simple attributes. In fact, there are more than a few men who have none of them.

Take one of my co-workers, for example. I swear the guy is almost completely personality-free. It isn’t that he is a bad-tempered guy, it that he is a no-tempered guy. One day his car was in the shop and his wife came by to pick him up. I left the building before my sullen coworker, and it gave me the chance to exchange a few words with his wife on the way to my car. I discovered that she was a very nice, very pleasant woman. In fact, I was shocked. After the brief chat I went to my car, dropped into the driver’s seat and just sat there for a moment trying to figure out what a charming, affable woman was doing going through life with what was basically a mannequin with a pulse. Maybe she just wanted to be left alone her entire life. Maybe that was it.  

Many years ago I was set-up on a blind date with this very becoming woman. When I first laid my eyes on her I thought I was seeing an angel. The trouble was; she seemed almost completely incapable of thinking. It wasn’t that she was an airhead. Airheads have something. At one point during the evening I attempted some pretty solid self-deprecating humor. She never said a word, never cracked a smile. As pretty as she was, as far as I was concerned the evening could not end soon enough. Heck, she probably was thinking the same thing, assuming she was thinking at all.

Down the street from me a ways lives a couple consisting of an obese white woman endowed with various tattoos, and a young, muscular, black man. There is a child involved. I often see the woman sitting on their front steps chain-smoking cigarettes. I have wondered what brought the couple together, what the relationship is like, and the prospects for the union twenty years down the road. I know nothing about the relationship, they might be very happy, but I can’t help feeling sorry for both of them.

A few weeks ago I ran into a friend of mine at the grocery store. We play basketball together on Saturday mornings. He’s about forty, as is his wife, who was with him there in the store. He introduced me to his spouse and then he and I chatted for a moment or two. The guy is a smart but somewhat farcical, consequently our brief conversation wandered into the inane. Nevertheless, his wife’s kindly eyes never wavered from her husband’s face as she listened intently to his every word, and a sweet smile left her lips only when it was overtaken by a poorly suppressed giggle.

 

Point is; there are a lot of relationships that do not appear to make any sense at all, at least not to me, but then there are other relationships that seem to have found, well, perfection. It's truly baffling.