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| what’s the sound of two edies talking? |
Scene: I am 19, Big Edie on my break up with my boyfriend, Bobby, who we both thought was “the one.”
Big Edie: I feel sorry for the men in your life. You take the nice ones and twist their minds, and you take the crazy ones and push them right over the edge.
Scene: Thirty years later, she is 79 and finally found a good one for herself, and we’d talk about the men in her life. And I’d realize which side of the family I inherited my broken picker from. But there’s a no return policy on the original factory-installed parts for this 1957 model. Not the broken picker, the shoddy brakes, or my busted speedometer. I went too fast, in the wrong direction, with no idea how to slow down. For thousands of miles and hundreds of years.
I don’t tell her he wasn’t “the one,” at all, he wasn’t even “one of the good ones.” He was simply one in a long line of bullets I would dodge, playing with crazy too often, just a little too close to the edge.
I’ve installed a super-sized rear view mirror so it’s a little easier to see the roads I’ve traveled, where I’ve been, the places I’m leaving. And every once in a while I pull over, and leave a little more luggage by the side of the road.
