A few nights ago I suggested to The Suitor that we play a board game. After searching under the bed and various closets for Monopoly to no avail, we agreed to collaborate on a writing excercise for the blog. He would write a line and I would counter. Where it went was anyone’s guess. Funny, I originally posted this without an explanation. Below is the fruits of our labor:
Some of the smartest people I know seem to do the dumbest things. Like watch "The Best Man" when they could be in bed with candles and nail polish and Joshua Kadison singing about painting toenails red. But that’s cliché and who wants to be cliché? Dumb people, and I have to admit, Joshua Kadison at my age is right up there in the dumb league.
So we sit like Ozzie and Harriet on the sofa imagining what effect the fumes of "bordello red" nail polish would have on our motor skills. Except I’ve only heard of Ozzie & Harriet, know it’s TV, but that’s all. Conversations between a younger woman and an older man typically go like this. I love older men for their sense, or apparent sense, of being settled, of knowing who they are, for their gray hair and realization that they are ready for more in their lives. They see in younger women the potential, the optimism of a future. I told you, dumb people. Maybe dumb people make the best partners. I’m hoping for more than maybe. Perhaps what we see as a deficiency of the the dumb & dumber is rather an innocence, the ability to just "be in the moment" without too much analysis. Ignorance is bliss? Nah, it’s not ignorance ‘cause ignorance goes more with stupidity which isn’t what we’re talking about. Wait, did I miss that memo; there’s a difference between dumb and stupid, now? Indeed there is, stupid.
Everything between us is a battle, my writing against you, like pinning you up against a wall just to be pushed down. Collaboration is neither a battle nor a dance. It’s together, here and now, but just for now, before we fall back into our roles of his and hers, of right and wrong, of yours and mine becoming ours.
The end brings anything but an ending, a new beginning, a continuation of something created with love. I don’t know what that means; it sounds better written than ever said because once it’s said, it’s less real, in the air, floating and trying to find. And the dumb get dumber…
I wish things weren’t so difficult, but I hope the wish doesn’t come true. I can’t recall the first time I made a wish. If I made one now, as much as I hate to admit it, it would be to be different than I am. I don’t mean physically although we all know my history on that topic. I wish I made things easier for him, that I wasn’t so hard, so emotional, so quick to judge or jump. Funny thing (or sad depending on your perspective) is that my wish is within my grasp. I also wish he wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t try to underscore (or hit me over the head with) change at each chance. But that is not smart or dumb, just his way of finding a common happiness, in my unhappiness within myself.
