charlotte harris

“You’re so little!”  “You have such nice breath!”  “You wash your hair every day?”  “You don’t have hair on your feet?”  ”Why do you brush your teeth if you’re just gonna drink some coffee?” 

Each time he makes remarks like these, I smile a little and think to myself… wow, he’s impressed that I have good personal care habits?  Awesome!  Because in a crazy way it all serves to augment my mental image of his ex-wife.  I reason that if he thinks it’s cool and unusual that I am fit and clean, I can only surmise that she might have been the opposite: obese with greasy hair, hairy feet, gunky teeth, and bad breath.  And in a twisted way, that makes me very satisfied.

So when we awkwardly ran into his ex-family (but not his ex-) in the mall yesterday and all six of them were so good looking and happy and friendly… I got a little bit bummed.  People usually resemble their family, so now of course I think she must have been petite with porcelain skin, silky straight shiny hair, and big blue eyes.  And a nice person.

Why do I think about things like this?  I don’t know.  I just sorta needed to picture her as big and greasy.  

So by the time MF and I left the mall and arrived at the restaurant for brunch, I had become a little quiet (I was busy inside my head erasing the old and creating the new mental image!).  I tried to pretend I wasn’t distracted, but he could tell the whole awkward encounter upset me a little.  He thought it was because he didn’t introduce us, after all it was uncomfortable for him too.  So, while we waited in the bar for his parents,  I ordered a big bloody mary and spilled my ridiculous little secret. 

“That’s it?  That’s pretty funny,”  he said.  He was relieved, I think, that I wasn’t at all upset about not being introduced.  So I told him like I just told you here, “Babe, I just really needed to picture her as big and gross.” 

He laughed and explained to me that his ex-wife had, in fact, been “fat.”  But that she went and shed all those pounds, only to shed him and their life together with it.  She changed her image… and changed her mind.  

I asked more questions and got more answers and he held my hand just like he’d held my hand the whole time we stood there in the mall with his ex-family.  It turns out I didn’t need to imagine her ugly just to make myself feel better, I simply just needed to talk it out.

OK, so who is cuter?  Me or my vivid mental picture of her?  With a twisted up, lips pursed, chin to neck, eyes rolling face like this? (how do I repeatedly let myself be captured on film like this?) Say me anyway. 

And if you don’t know by now that I am kidding, please just don’t say anything at all.