An Introduction of Sorts

First, I would like to say that when I was setting up my account, I selected the option for Adult Content. Understand this doesn't mean I will be posting erotica or putting up photos of naughty bits. While I'm not 100% sure what I'll be posting here, my research indicates that there is not a massive shortage of pornography available on the web, so I see no sense in adding my own.

Really, I selected the Adult Content option because I have a terrible mouth. It's not something I revel in or defend, it's just what I do. I couldn't handle the idea of someone stumbling unsuspecting onto my little page and not being able to sleep that night because of my lack of verbal creativity, so I'll protect them with the warning. For those of you so desensitized by hours of pornography that you are actually paging through blog pages trying to find just the right set of breasts, I apologize. This won't be your new home.

To learn anything about me these days, you have to start with my wife Jen. We're coming up on our six year anniversary this weekend, and her tolerance seems to know no bounds. She's a funny girl.

Jen seems to believe that her best thinking is done in that inky dark part of evening when I am finally starting to drift off to sleep. This is the time that she wants to run through the list of things that are going through her brain as if keeping inventory in the most depressing Target storeroom imaginable. She runs through each concern that is pulling her further and further away from her own sleep, labels them aloud and then moves on to the next. It's almost like she believes that if I get all stressed out thinking about this stuff, I can take over for her and she can get some sleep.

For the most part it's passionless. The list tends to carry the same gravitas as your average 5th grader reciting the 50 states and their capitals:

"We have got to get the dogs to the groomers. It's amazing that they can even see where they're going."

"Did you take the movies back?"

"You didn't call your brother back."

"Do you have to go in early tomorrow? (Followed closely by: Did you get coffee ready?)"

"I added those floss thingies to the list. We need to try to find the mint ones again. The last ones we got were plain and after having the mint, they're just...well...plain."

"I'm a bad Buddhist."

"I have a hair appointment Tuesday. The last time I was there I told her to be careful with my ears since the piercings are still sore, and what did she do? Fucking murdered my ears. She's so good though..."

"I wish we could just sell this house. That second mortgage was such a bad idea. What if there was a fire...?"

The other night while I was drifting off to sleep she came up with a good one: "Doesn't it scare you that you don't believe in God? It freaks me out to think that if I die there's just nothing. I just can't do that."

"Why not?" I ask.

"It just scares me. Why doesn't it scare you? You grew up in the church and all of that..."

I thought about it for a minute. It's something that I had thought about before, but had never found an answer for. Then a possible explanation came to me. As usual, I spoke while still thinking it through, making me sound unsure and possibly disingenuous.

"Before I was born, I was nothing. There wasn't a single bit of me anywhere out there. I wasn't scared about being nothing then, and I sure wasn't scared about the fact that I came from nothing after I was born and grew up. So why should I be scared about going back into nothing now?"

There was a thick pause. I could hear her breathing as she thought about what I said. With a sigh in the darkness, she turned to her side leaving her back to me.

"You're an idiot."