Pandora's Box Cutter

A few weeks ago I misplaced a box cutter at work. Several days later, the person whose box cutter I had misplaced was fired. I felt the same way I did in my high school French class one day, when I had been talking to my friend and only she got in trouble. Sometimes life just isn't fair.

Though my feelings of survivor's guilt have abated (the keeper of the box cutter, who looked as if she would slit my throat with it when she realized I had lost it, simply sucked at her job), my coworkers have done their best to remind me every chance they get that I am a thief. It didn't help when I accidentally left the shop the other day sporting several necklaces and bracelets that did not belong to me. I have been branded -- and not in a positive, retail strategy kind of way. I am a repeat offender, an incorrigible miscreant, a taker of things that are not rightfully mine.

It's no different from marriage. You lie once and you're a pathological liar, unworthy of ever being trusted again. The branding runs so deep that you actually start to believe your divorce attorneys, who have billed you for almost three years' worth of nonsense to bring you back to the same deal you would have made on day one, just with less money in the pot, are people you can trust, who have your best interests at heart. Under cover of carefully crafted billing statements, they have stolen from you repeatedly, and will happily continue to do so until the well is dry, yet we embrace them as our guardian angels in an endless battle against somebody once so cherished and trusted we allowed him or her to watch us pee.

And so it went, when, yet again, the angels from hell, who have already pocketed the equivalent of several college tuitions, trashed what two reasonably intelligent people had agreed to on their own and embarked on the latest frenzy of bizarre documents and filings. Cha-ching, cha-ching. Good thing I still can't find the box cutter. (No, of course I am not suggesting I would harm anybody; I just want to shred all the paper. Yes, that's it.) Making do with a nibble of a miraculous little anxiety pill, I set out instead to reason with my estranged husband. After all, we do not steal from each other on a daily basis; we only lied to each other once or twice.

He told me why his botox addled attorney butchered our latest agreement. I assured him her fears were unfounded, and that I would never do what she told him I might do, which, by the way, was continue to drag him back into court in the years to come. "Would your attorney allow you to take my word for something?" he asked, knowing the answer was surely NO, particularly since allowing me to do so would crash the fee gravy train.

"Of course not," I admitted. "But it's not up to him." There is nothing like a little self-assured sounding declaration of independence to make my husband stop and think, maybe for a second even, that I am not a complete loser. He was taking a long time to respond, so I added what I thought was a very good point. "If you think I will ever give another cent to a matrimonial attorney to deal with our personal problems, you are nuts." I try to avoid name calling, but I thought I really needed to drive the point home to get things moving. Our tendency to brand people as liars and thieves just because of one or two little missteps along the way notwithstanding, we both agreed we could still, after all these years, take each other's word. And if we were willing to take that big step, it would be like winning our own miniature power ball. Very miniature, but I'm all about aiming low and appreciating the little things.

The Matrimonial Bar

Who knows? Maybe the matrimonial bar monkeys will be off our backs soon, and we will be able to put this whole nightmare behind us. I am a person who rescues lost dogs when nobody else will take the trouble to stop and possibly get their hands smelly (another story for another time). I am polite to people who do not have my best interests at heart, because I don't want to hurt their feelings. My husband washed floors and cleaned toilets in a nursing home as a teenager, and sends leftover home cooked delicacies home to me from time to time, and so far nothing has appeared to be laced with hemlock. We both screwed up a few times, but I like to think we're basically decent people. After all, our kids all turned out to be pretty damn good citizens. At the risk of setting the bar pretty low, we are not, and never would be, matrimonial attorneys. At least not in the system as we know it.

And we still both have a pretty good sense of humor after all we've put each other through (mine's better and more sophisticated of course), which I think counts for a lot and will help us come out on the other side a little beaten up but still standing and much wiser. Which is more than I can say for the keeper of the box cutter at work. Sure, she was lousy at her job, but I really think the axe fell because of her complete lack of a sense of humor. To say the least, she was not amused by my cavalier attitude toward the whole affair. My "let her use scissors" suggestion was not well received.

Sometimes life isn't fair. But sometimes, in the long run, I like to think it is.