My ex-husband is nothing if not consistent.
I figured when we got divorced that he would change. I thought that his little stunts were an act, one that he facilitated to end our marriage. I figured he'd move out and move up. Or at least grow the hell up. I mean, my little man-child had done some incredibly juvenile things over the years -- peeing in the armoire, spending thousands on go-carts, adopting a cat (and leaving him) just a month before he left me. The list goes on and on.
When he left, I believed that solitude would be a maturing experience for him. As I spoke with him this morning, I realized that wasn't the case. Apparently, divorce isn't one of those things that change boys to men.
We were shooting the shit about our youngest daughter, who happens to be sick at the moment. I heard a racket in the background. It almost sounded like he was in a bar. I looked at my watch -- it was 10:30 a.m. Unless he'd suddenly joined a fraternity, which I wouldn't put past him, there was absolutely no excuse for him to be at a watering hole this early in the morning.
"Where the hell are you?" I asked him.
"I'm at that convenience store. You know, the one where I buy my hardboiled eggs," he said.
How could I forget? When we were married, he'd scarf down six or seven of those
bad boys and come home with gas so bad he could have taken down a small village. Just
recalling it makes my stomach turn and my nose burn. A stench like that stays with you
for a lifetime.
"Oh, what are you doing there?" I inquired. I don't know why I asked, but something told me he was up to his old tricks.
"I'm playing the slot machines in the back," he admitted freely.
Whoooaaaa. This had to be a joke. For starters, we didn't live in Vegas. It wasn't that we didn't have any casinos -- we had our share. And one might think that if an individual DID get the urge to gamble, they might hit one of these casinos up. But it wasn't really legal to give payouts on amusement only machines. Of course, that likely made it all the more appealing to the Fedster.
So instead of hitting the legal slots, J-Fed would much rather find some hole in the wall convenience store that had "slot" machines in the back, porn behind the counters and (I'm willing to bet) a piece of ass in the back of the store. If J-Fed had been alive back in the days of prohibition, he would have been the one hauling, brewing and drinking the moonshine. Needless to say, unregulated gambling was RIGHT up his alley. If you could even call this gambling.