If You’re An Ex, And I’m An Ex…Are All Ex’s Bad?
I am your ex. Yeah, that ought to cradle me in the bosom of many divorced women. I am your ex. I’ll be hiding behind this rock over here if you don’t mind. I’ll duck before you recover from the shock.
Quite the thing to learn, huh?
“I love to learn things.” That’s what Billy says. Billy is this older gentleman in my writers’ group. He writes these wonderful one-page vignettes remembering his youth. He never writes about being married, so I don’t know if that was ever the case. I do know one thing: whenever he reads someone else’s submission, he says the same thing, “I love to learn things.”
I am your ex and I’m not sure he’d love to learn this.
I love to learn things too. And life is like a top-heavy apple tree of knowledge. Fruits bob before our faces everyday, and bonk our heads when we forget to duck. Knowledge surrounds us and all it takes is time to pluck. I always take time to pluck. My favorite plucking subject? People.
I love people. I love learning from them and about them. They’re fun, they’re unpredictable, and you can never tell the heart of their fruit just by testing the rind. You need to sink your teeth in and take a bite, and once you’ve bitten, well, ask Snow White how that turns out.
There are ways to tell the good fruit from the bitter though. Obviously when you’re considering a relationship, you want to be really certain before the I do nibble. There’s a lot of probing and tapping and testing.
“Hey! What are you probing there for?”
One of the things I’ve learned through probing is that the best way to find the heart of a person is to see how they treat their enemies. Learn that and you’ll know where you stand.
If a person has a Santa list for everybody who’s ever wronged them, that’s a sign. Look at the list. Imagine your name as that calligraphic word, three lines down from the top. That’s right, admire it, because, deserve it or not, at some point, your name will be there.
That’s true for all of us though. Think of all the people you know. Who do you know that’s never been on your naughty list? Me, I’m pretty sure that I rub people who don’t even know me the wrong way. That’s right, I’m a lint roller in a fur pile. One way or another, I’m picking up dirty fuzz.
That’s why you look to people’s enemies. How they treat them is exactly how you will be treated someday.
I am your ex.
That’s right. Not many people consider their ex for friend of the year. Even if they do consider them, the ex usually loses out to the guy who throws darts at his dog. No, we all hold a special space in our personal hell for our exes. It’s because we have knowledge. We know who they are.
“By their fruit shall they be known”
Exes are the rotten mush beneath our feet, and how we dance in the mush says everything about us. It doesn’t matter what kind of worm home our ex was, our dance doesn’t move to their beat, it moves to our own. The rhythm shows our inner selves, our ability to forgive, and our desire to move on.
Does your dance include stiletto heels atop their meaty heart? That dance does not show your best side. Like I said, that heart could be mine, and I don’t know what made you light his crotch on fire, only that if I pluck your fruit, that falsetto flamba could be me.
No thanks. I’ll have the sushi.
That’s why I got close to My Ex in the beginning. She had an ex, and although she didn’t have nice things to say about him, they weren’t spoken to prove the size of his ass, or how glad she was to kick it to the curb. They were spoken because they were a part of her history, and I was looking for a lesson.
So when you’re ready to go out into the world of dating, look at how people talk about their exes. Also, remember to watch how you talk about yours, because what you say, says more about you than it does about them.
Well, that and I am your ex. I don’t want you talking bad about me. I do plenty of that myself.
