The Guy I Should Have Married

There is a guy who sits in the cubicle next to me and he talks to his wife sometimes on the phone. I really like him. I like the way he talks to her. I wish I had married a guy like him. He is just so nice to her. From his side of the conversations, I can tell that she is looking for a job and she clearly has had her confidence shaken somehow. He just encourages her and helps her know what to say in the interviews when she's trying to talk about salary.

I really like that, because he doesn't do it in a way that makes her seem stupid. He is smart and he helps her know what to say and not get discouraged.

One day she smashed the wheels of the car because she got a flat and was scared to change it. So she kept on driving. He was kind of funny about it, but not mean. I could only hear one side of the conversation, but it was like he was talking to me.

He was like, "Uh-huh….yeah? Uh-huh…oh."

Silence.

Then, "Hey, Mario Andretti, you're supposed to pull over."

More silence. I think she was explaining.

"Well, that's ok. That's ok. Don't worry. Ummm, how far did you drive with it?"

"Well, about how far?"

"I see. OK. Well, sweetie, a couple of miles can be kind of far sometimes..."

Then, "Ok, it's ok. It's ok. We'll get it fixed, no big deal. The important thing is that you're not hurt."

There was a few more minutes of "No, really, it's OK. Don't worry. Really, don't worry."

Then he hung up and chuckled. I heard him telling the guy in the next cubicle what had happened, that she had gotten a flat on the highway and was afraid to stop. So she drove on the rim for a few miles. They kind of laughed a little about it together, and the other guy told a story about how his wife had backed out of the garage with the passenger side door open. She ripped the door off the car and destroyed the garage, too. The thing is, neither of them sounded angry. They just sounded like, yeah, my wife did that too.

It made me feel a lot better, but also kind of sad. I should have married a guy like that. I didn't, and it's why I'm divorced. I married a guy who got annoyed when I forgot the word for something in the middle of a sentence.

It happens. I'm a woman.