...anyway, back on topic, which was my lack of any fashion sense.

 

See, I've always had sisters, or girlfriends, to help me pick out clothes and sunglasses and stuff. And then for almost 13 years my wife did it. But now I'm divorced, and all of my friends are busy running around doing their own things so we don't hang out like we used to, and now I'm thinking I'm going to have to hire someone to tell me what looks cool. Or maybe "cool" is too strong a word, maybe just someone to minimize my doofiness.

 

And so I'm in the store and I see the sunglasses and I go over there trying some on, but nothing looks right. Or I should say, everything looks right. Of course I could just pick out the ones that I like, but then I would be afraid that someone would tell me that they made my head look weird or something, and so I would go around paranoid that folks were laughing at my head-shape, or I would have blown $15.00 because there is no way I will go to a return counter and say "I'd like to return these, because they make my head look weird." Actually, no, that last thing sounds like something I would do, it just wouldn't be successful.

 

I just don't trust my own sense of shape and color, and like I said I've always had people to do these things for me. My wife did it for so long, and before that it was nothing to get a girlfriend or sister to just go to the mall with me. But it's different now.

 

And so I stand alone at the sunglasses rack and I'm just overwhelmed with grief and I start to cry like a little girl. But not really. Really I am standing there feeling pathetic and stupid and thinking how different things are now than they were a year ago.

 

But in almost every other important way (excepting that no one is there to help me pick out sunglasses), my life is better. At least, it's a lot more normal than before.

 

Like, now, I have a cell phone, and a watch. Granted there are lots of folks who don't have cellphones, but almost everyone has a watch. I am taking care of my kids now, and driving them places and spending time with them, where I almost never could before.

 

The biggest change, though, for me anyway, is that I no longer work the night shift. You might not think this would really be such a big deal, but you would be wrong. Consider that, when I was on the night shift and I was married and my wife was home with the kids, I could almost always work late if I needed to, and hardly ever had to rush home, golly, I hardly ever had to rush anywhere. I never got stuck in traffic, and when I went places at night I hardly ever had to wait for anything. Because of the way my crazy ex-wife did things, I never balanced a checkbook or paid any of the bills or even knew how much I had in the bank.

 

Now of course all that has changed. I get up in the morning, just like everyone else, I shower and drink coffee and sometimes have to eat a cereal bar for breakfast while I'm stuck in traffic, just like everyone else. I pay my bills online and run errands on my lunch break, I clip coupons, I talk to my kids' teachers and make sure all the homework is done.

 

I'm noticing how much time regular folks seem to spend waiting for things to change. We stop at redlights and get stuck in traffic, we stand in line, we get put on hold all the time. That part really stucks. I don't know how philosophical I want to get, like how discontent everyone is with the way things are that we spend all our time waiting around for things to change, because I don't really feel like it now anyway.

 

Now I'm standing here at the sunglasses rack feeling stupid and I shuffle off to finish the rest of my shopping, trying to look at the bright side. After all, it's not too difficult to come up with good things about being divorced from an insane person. And even though I don't have girlfriends and am starting to seriously seriously wonder if I ever will again, there are of course a hundred bajillion things that are good about not having to put up with anyone's crap, not having to answer to anyone else or worry about how they're feeling. And it's not like I don't have my same old friends who I can just call to talk about things with.

 

You know, normal everyday things like, do you think Spider-Man wears underwear under his Spidey suit? And when he's just hanging out somewhere and he has to go change in an alley or a men's room, what does he do with his normal clothes? Maybe he webs them to a wall or hides them in a ceiling panel or something. That would kind of suck because what if he's like in a bank or something and has to change in the men's room. Now that sucks because when the fight is over he has to go back to that same men's room, still dressed as Spider-Man. He has to retrieve his clothes, because obviously he still has to go places as Peter Parker, and anyway it's so obvious that he had to leave his wallet and keys there, you never see a wallet bulge on his back pocket or hear him jingle when he's jumping all over the place.

 

Anyway, my friends are always happy to hear from me. I think. And life isn't so bad, even though the sun gets in my eyes all the time.