Uh Oh Arnold

What do you think happened, did the mother of this love child start things by saying "My what beautiful blue eyes you have Governor!" Or was he the one who crossed line first by casually letting it drop that his wife didn’t really understand him? A guy in his late 30s  said that to me in a pizza shop about ten years ago. To me, this middle-aged person who looks a whole lot more like this Mildred 'Patty' Baena than she does like Kim Kardashian I can tell you,  though I did send away for padded underpants once to get the laugh from my family. (They were a bust, it was sad. I just looked double-diapered.)This guy in the pizza shop anyway: he was worked up that day because the bank down the street had just been robbed and his wife was a bank teller there. She may have been the one the guy pointed his gun at I forget. Anyway he was wired, talking on and on.I just listened - it’s what I've learned to do in life - and maybe my listening created this warm bath for him in which he felt he could get real comfy and just say anything.“My wife. She doesn’t understand me” is what he said in those very clichéd  words. "Sometime I feel so alone.”    “Ah that’s just the human condition though, you know that, right?” I said. “Birds don’t feel that way; dogs either. It’s just us. We’re homesick for something we can’t quite remember. Steven Spielberg thinks it's the past, that we're homesick for childhood. Others think we’re half-remembering Eden.”He just looked at me. Then he sighed. “Maybe,” he finally said and picked up his pizza box and headed stoop-shouldered toward the door. “I guess I’ll head back and check on my wife,” he added.For sure it’s what the ex-Governor should have done. That longing that thinks it will find relief in sex? That's usually from a deeper place that sex can’t ever touch. Or maybe old 'Patty' reminded him of his mom, or the girl that got away. or maybe he really just wanted one more child. We’re mysteries even to ourselves isn’t it so? Sometimes I think especially to ourselves.