Weasels At The Door

I should start by thanking Lisa for this idea.  When she wrote about how her doctor assessed her age and appearance, she reminded me of an incident that happened several years ago, thanks to my ex-wife.  The incident in question happened eight years ago, when I was 36.  I’ve always thought I looked young, and even now at 44, I haven’t even got crow’s feet.  

But let me digress for a moment:

For as long as I’ve known her, my ex-wife has been what I will politely refer to as a “money gatherer”.  Throughout our marriage, even when I handled the bills, she had an uncanny ability to save money.  Though our combined income was more than seventy thousand a year (fifteen years ago), she would grudgingly allow me twenty dollars a week spending cash, out of which, I was to buy my lunches.  She’d somehow manage to keep herself to less than five dollars a week.  I knew very well how dearly she valued a dollar.

In retrospect, I should have realized that when we divorced, she’d still value my dollars very dearly.

I know.  Every ex-husband on the planet complains about his financial woes every time he thinks of his wallet.

This is not the same thing.  Seriously, I never begrudged her a share of my retirement check.  While I was serving the country, she made sacrifices, too…not the least of which was putting her career on hold for the first five years of our marriage while the Navy and I moved us from place to place.  I figure she’s entitled to half of what I earned in retirement for the period we were married, and coincidentally, that’s how the California courts think, too.

As a cynical former co-worker used to say, “You never really know a woman until you’ve faced her in court.”  The value my ex-wife places on a dollar became painfully clear the moment we set foot in the courthouse.  She insisted on a straight fifty-fifty split of my military retirement, though we’d only been married for eight years and eight months, which was just about half of the time I’d been on active duty by then.  So, while she would rightfully be entitled to a quarter of my retirement, she insisted on half.  It became a contentious point, and we fought over it for more than a year.  

By “fought over it”, I mean that we would basically recite Monty Python’s “Argument Sketch” through our attorneys:

Me: Oh, this is futile!
Her: No, it isn’t.
M: This really isn’t an argument.  It’s just contradiction.
H: No, it isn’t.
M: Yes it is! An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
H: No, it isn’t.
M: Yes, it is!  It’s not just contradiction.
H: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but it isn’t just saying ‘No, it isn’t’.
H: Yes, it is!
M: No, it isn’t!
H: Yes, it is!
M: Argument is an intellectual process.  Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
H: No, it isn’t.

All this at $175 an hour.  

For a year and a half.

Finally, I asked the court to rule on the issue, and because I was still on active duty and might not even serve out my twenty years, the judge decided that there was not yet any retirement to even discuss and further, since my official state of residence was Connecticut and not California, my ex-wife should take it up with Connecticut at the appropriate time.

Now, it is possible for a service member to request retirement up to eighteen months before his or her date of eligibility for retirement.  My ex-wife knew this, and mere seconds after the eighteen month clock started counting down, she called me to ask what my plans for retirement were.

I had none.  I patiently explained to her that filing my request for retirement made me ineligible for promotion, and that I wasn’t ready to close the door on that just yet.  She insisted that I submit my retirement papers immediately.  I refused, and I held firm.  

All of this leads to the amusing part of our story.

One Sunday evening in December, I came back unexpectedly from an exercise at sea.  No one could have anticipated my being home that night; I’d been gone for six days, was scheduled for another eight days underway, and only an engineering casualty on the ship had prompted our return that night.  

There was a knock at the door.  When I opened my front door, there stood one of the most bizarre-looking characters I have ever encountered.  He stood about five-foot-eight, and wore a long black leather jacket which was open enough to reveal the t-shirt and suspenders underneath.  His pants were baggy and purple, and looked as though they were intended to be the bottom half of a zoot suit.  A yellow fedora completed the ensemble.  

I am not making this up.

He looked like one of the weasel henchmen from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

He spoke.  “Keemberlee Kebbofitch?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Keemberlee Kebbofitch.”  He held out a large manila envelope.  “Keemberlee Kebbofitch?”

It dawned on me that he was asking for my ex-wife.  “Dude,” I said, unable to contain my amusement, “she lives in Arizona.”

He looked bewildered for a moment, frowned at the address on the envelope, and asked, “Areezona?”

“Yes.”

He frowned again, looked up at me and asked, “Keemberlee Kebbofitch?”

I decided he was stupid, and said curtly, “Dude.  She’s. Not. Here.”  I closed the door and snapped the bolt home.

The next morning, the manila envelope was on my doorstep.  He’d been a process server attempting to serve me with papers informing me of my ex-wife’s petition to the Connecticut courts for half of my military retirement.

On the paperwork attached to the outside of the envelope, he’d described me as “overweight balding male, aged mid to late forties.”

I hate weasels.