The people at work nicknamed me "hotdog". Every day I would come in and they would make fun of me. They had a drawer full of mustard and would offer me some. They were relentless. Never ending.
They knew I was hungry.
I was a carpet installer for 15 years. That's really all I might be now. Once you do it, it's like being a cowboy I imagine.
You always kind of identify with hard working people and the salt of the earth.
I had a girlfriend. She had 4 kids, 2 dogs, 2 rabbits, a turtle and a rat. That's a lot of mouths to feed.
Add in the fact I had a truck payment and she had a jeep, and I had gotten us a 4 bedroom house in California but I was still living in Florida, so I had rent here too (had to be where the work was - so I flew out or drove out once every 6 weeks taking my stuff out there getting ready for the full move).
I was just killing myself.
Work, work, work, work work.
Hotdogs were all I could afford - for myself (believe me, they were eating steak, pork roast, pizza, good stuff all day).
I ate a hotdog from the Shell station every day. That's how I got the nickname from the bosses.
I wanted to make her and the kids happy. So I sacrificed.
Years later she cheated on me and told me not to come back to California.
I was on my final drive there. To be with them "forever".
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I once had another girlfriend. I mowed her dad's grass just to make her happy. It wasn't one of those stand there and push it back and forth - nope, all on hills.
Grass so tall you could love a small animal. And I probably ran over a few determined by the number of times I had to re-crank the engine to get it going again.
I briefly went to college for her. Moved in with her. Paid for everything. She never even worked (read the story of her in a previous post).
Later I quit a menial job that made me miserable. I would find another.
She told me I was a bum and going to be nothing more than that. Just a bum.
I think she was cheating on me because it wasn't long she married some other guy.
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Another girlfriend just cheated all the time. I just wanted to make her happy.
Her husband had been killed in a car she was driving. He was a friend of mine.
I used to call over and she would answer the phone - I wouldn't even acknowledge here, "hey, let me talk to ...." "Aren't you going to say hi?" "Hi, let me talk to ...."
It wasn't my job to be friends with his wife.
One night after he was killed she called - wanted to go out with our group of friends. I picked her up. Dropped her baby off at a babysitter.
After that night we were a couple.
Until we weren't.
No telling how many times she actually cheated.
I was busy working and trying to provide for her and the baby.
I just wanted to make her happy.
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After we broke up I went back to a girl who, it turns out, was cheating with me on her boyfriend the first time we were together.
I didn't know it until she married him.
For months I thought we were together.
Especially when I took a bus 24 hours up to NY to spend a week with her and spent a small fortune flying back to a different city and catching a 5 hour bus back to the original start city.
During her marriage I was with the other one. Once she got divorced and the other one cheated, we got back together.
"Why are you back with her?" my friends would ask.
"She made a mistake. She didn't want to marry the other guy, she wanted to be with me. And I want to make her happy"
Moved her down.
Until she cheated with a friend of mine. And they got married.
Quick story about her - she was half Italian and half Puerto Rican. you never knew which one you would get - which sometimes made it interesting, sometimes a little scary.
One day she came home and there was a spot on the floor. She was an Italian. Awe look, a spot on the floor.
No kidding, the next day she came home. She was a Puerto Rican.
Same spot on the floor.
She started throwing stuff all over. Stomping around. Freaking out.
Stomped on one of my favorite CD's - and back then they were expensive.
The proverbial "broken record". (Well, she did name her dog Paxil)
Um.
Probably better if she moved on.
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The lesson here could be that girls are cheaters. They rip your heart out. You love them and they walk all over you. They take advantage of you and they are experts at spending your money.
Leave you starving to death. Eating only hotdogs and being made fun of.
Not for me.
Sure, it's true - sacrificing too much for someone else is nothing more than sacrificing too much. Period.
However, the lesson for me is I'm perfectly balanced when it comes to wanting to make girls happy.
A little stupid. A lot overboard. But balanced enough that I don't want to blame one for the faults of the others.
That's their problems, not mine.
What they did had nothing to do with me.
I just happened to be around and have the wrong sense about who cared for me (never got that one right).
Sure, I could clam up and tell all the girls to go .... themselves.
I could turn into that guy that all the women love (and really, that it is the truth) who treats them like dirt and cares nothing for them.
The one they keep going back to over and over again leaving everyone else wondering why they do what they do (except for their girlfriends who totally agree with what they are doing because they also want to do that).
That's too much like taking the easy way out.
It's much much harder to just be who you are and stick to what you know.
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I stick to wanting to make girls happy.
Girls are precious anyhow. They're only girls.
Pocket Change
But I don't pay for houses. I'm not going to feed your 7 kids, sorry. I don't do favors like cutting someone else's grass. And I don't go back to where I've been before hoping for a different outcome.
When something is over, it's just over.
Anything else, until another cheats, rips my heart out, steals my wallet, and I learn another lesson of what not to do, I'm pretty much open for.
Sign me up.
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