I received a call last night from the East Coast guy I dated after John's death. He had a family wedding going on this weekend he wanted to tell me about, and I wanted to hear about his girlfriend. He has avoided mentioning to me any women in his life, telling me instead that I set the standard by which all women are measured, and hoping I would think I broke his heart irretrievably, take pity on him, and come back to him. (Trust me: ain't gonna happen.)
As he was telling me about this woman, who has seven children ranging in age from 30-something to 13, he said something about the "llama lady". Puzzled, I asked who the llama lady was. He said, "You".
"Don't you remember? You broke up with me because of a llama."
Well, that was seven years ago, and I don't remember anything about a llama. So he proceeded to remind me.
We had gone to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in Howard County, Maryland, in May of 1999. It was an enjoyable event — sheep herding demonstrations, spinning, weaving, dyeing, felting, lotsa stuff of interest to me. It was a lovely cool clear-blue-sky day. We walked past a pen holding several llamas. I turned to look at him, and the wind blew my hair up. He says he looked at my windblown sandy-brown hair and the llama's windblown sandy-brown hair and said, "you look just alike." Evidently I found that offensive. He said my demeanor changed at that moment and the rest of the day was rather unpleasant.
He said the next day he was at my apartment waiting while I got ready for us to go somewhere. I came out of the shower in a big fluffy robe, drying my hair with a towel. He looked at my hair and said, teasingly, how attractive it was.
His recollection was that those two events caused me to break up with him. He recalls that I said he was very cruel.
Hmmm. My recollection is that Tyler and I had had lunch a week or so earlier and Tyler expressed grave doubts and concerns about the rightness of this man for me. Subsequent to that lunch, I asked my beloved sister-in-law in Richmond for her opinion about this man, and she replied, "he's not someone I would ever want to get to know." Again, hmmm.
So I think, in trying to remember the llama event, that I was itching for a reason to break up with this guy, and the llama and hair comments, filled with his brand of teasing, pushed me over the edge.
As a postscript, he told me he had a conversation with my stepdaughter after my move to Tucson. She reportedly told him that he didn't understand about me and teasing. She told him that my brothers had teased me mercilessly as a child, never allowing me to forget that I was adopted and not a part of the family, and that teasing was very painful to me. (I'm really astonished that she knew me well enough to say this to him. Maybe he fabricated the conversation for effect, but he hit the nail on the head.)
He also opined that people only tease those they really love. If you don't love someone, you can't be bothered to tease them. To that, my response is: hogwash.
Anyway, I guess when you feel a relationship has run its course, any excuse will do.
(And please don't look for any writing between these lines. There is none!)
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After thinking about this post for an hour, I remember that it took three months from the llama episode for me to convince this guy that I was done with this chapter of my life.
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