My Ex Wife

“Sorry sis- I didn’t mean to get you pregnant.”

Before you think this is a tell all, trash my ex story, then you will be sadly disappointed. This story is dirt free. I have been over the hurt of our divorce for many, many years and am very happily married and I hope she too has found happiness.

Some of my happiness during my marriage to my first wife was some of the things I did to her- in a funny (to me) way. This will be a number of short, short stories that talk about many of the things that happened during the fourteen years we were married. I may throw in a few things that were not pranks on her.

Are you related?

“Are you brother and sister or man and wife?” the woman asked at the airplane check in waiting area. She said that she and a few co-workers had a bet on whether we were brother and sister or man and wife. I guess we either looked related or they thought we were from Arkansas. We laughed it off and continued on our trip.

I had remembered this incident a year later and used it to my advantage. Sue was about eight months pregnant with our son Chris. We were shopping at JC Penney’s in Anchorage, Alaska were we lived. We entered a crowded elevator and pushed the button for our selected floor. This is when I said out loud, “Sorry sis- I didn’t mean to get you pregnant.”

For some weird reason, Sue did not find the humor in that. Evil death rays shot out her eyes and I swear I was temporary blinded for a few seconds. Frankly, I don’t remember if she said anything to me about it but I’m sure I had a good talking to.

9-volt batteries

Did you know that to test 9-volt batteries you could lick the two terminals on the end and feel the amount of charge it had in them? I knew that- Sue did not. He, he. I took a fresh, never used, 9-volt battery and showed her how to do it, sticking it to my tongue and of course not showing any emotion as I got a slight zap of dc voltage. Sue then took the battery and did the same thing.

I still can see the look in her eyes and terror in her face when she got the unexpected jolt of electricity in her tongue. I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. I also hadn’t heard that language that was coming from her lips from her very often. I didn’t even know she served in the Navy.

.44 Magnum

“I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” Dirty Harry

I had a Ruger Super Blackhawk pistol when we lived in Alaska. The Super Blackhawk is a single action, .44 magnum handgun. I carried it when backpacking in the wild Alaska wilderness.

A .44 magnum can give of a hefty kick especially with the stock grips that I had on it. I shot a few rounds at the range with Sue watching intently. Boom! Another 240-grain bullet headed down range at around 1,500 feet per second. Bull’s eye! I asked Sue, “You wanna try it?” “Sure.” She said.

I handed her the pistol and stood behind her in case she had any questions for me. Click, she pulled back the hammer. Aim. Fire! Ka Boom! The bullet flashed out of the barrel. The gun moved in a very quick and upward motion rocking Sue on to her heals throwing her body off balance. The handgun barely missing her face as it flew suddenly upwards.

As I said, I was behind her. Good thing too because she may have ended up on her butt. This was the first time she shot my .44 magnum. This was also the last time she shot my .44 magnum. The next day she had a large bruise on the palm of her right hand where the pistol had jammed violently back into her palm.

Butt sledding

Butt sledding is just as it seems. You slid on your butt instead of a sled. We had hiked to the mountain right before Flat Top mountain outside of Anchorage. Flat Top was about 3,200 feet and a good climb. Sue didn’t want to go all the way up so we stayed on the other smaller one. It was spring and snow was still all around us. We hiked up a little bit when I decided to slide down on my feet. It was great!

I did that a few times on my feet and my butt but Sue didn’t want to try it. She was a little scared about it. Finally, she said she would. I went first. Weeeeeeee! She followed me. Yahhh! Ahhh! I turned to watch her thinking the noise emitting from her mouth was screams of joy. I was wrong-She was terrified.

The look on her face explained it all. She was not having fun and could not stop. She was panicking! I think she was on the verge of crying. When she finally stopped and I walked up to her to consol her she said, “Let’s do that again!” We did. Many times.

Reading Moose

It was a Saturday and I was posted at the WSA again on Elmendorf AFB. I had got into novels by this time because of all the free time I had and Sue was also a heavy reader. On this day Sue came out to see me. Of course, she was not authorized to be out there with me so she snuck in the back way, driving my Fiat 128 (missing 2^nd gear) as if it were a 4-wheel drive.

I picked her up and we drove to an open field were we proceeded to bury our face into some good books. Evidently, we got pretty engrossed into the books because at one point I looked up and a moose was staring right at me, its nose about two inches from my wind shield. We looked out the other windows and saw a few more moose just hanging around not seeming to pay us much attention.

So what would any person do in a situation like this? Dive back into our books of course.