Skeletons, Bars and True Confessions

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

In this column I have introduced you to a number (but not all) of the skeletons in my closet. Actually I don’t keep them in a closet. It is more like a warehouse or maybe a hotel where they can come and go as they like.

For the most part they are fairly pleasant skeletons and I enjoy their company when they show up. There are a few of my skeletons with whom I have nondisclosure agreements. I keep our secrets and they keep our secrets. It’s better for everyone that way.

The exception to the non-disclosure is my bride Management. Before we were married I offered to show her my entire collection of skeletons, which she wisely chose not to meet. This was fortunate for several reasons, the biggest being that we did not have time to discuss all of them if we intended to get married within ten years or so. I introduced her to the ugliest ones and the most persistent ones. Since none of those were deal breakers I figured she would adjust to the others as they randomly showed up

Not once have I had to answer, “Why didn’t you tell me that before we were married?” That is a good thing and the delay hasn’t interfered with continuing connubial compatibility.

She was aware before we were engaged that I once spent a reasonable amount of time in bars. My purpose in these visits was to research “social mores and customs of the indigenous post-pubescent humans.” After my 21st birthday I curtailed these visits for two reasons. One was that any bar and any night was the same as any other bar and any other night. The other reason was I had completed my research on “methods of unauthorized entrance into business establishments” as well as my research into “the manufacture and presentation of alternative personal identification” and the “redesign of institutional identification.”

Last weekend we went out to dinner. We had a choice of sitting in the restaurant or the bar. Naturally I chose the bar for its more relaxed atmosphere, not to mention as a protest against the law prohibiting smoking in restaurants. The food was excellent and my date was beautiful and entertaining.   I did notice she was a little bit uncomfortable.

I realized her discomfort might have been caused by the amount of smoke in the room although I have to say when I was younger if the cloud of smoke did not reduce visibility at eye level a bar was not considered excessively smoky. Based on my experience that little bit of smoke would have qualified it as a non-smoking bar in the 70’s.

When I went to pay the bill she had several folks stop and talk to her. From my previous research I expected this. After all, an attractive woman attracts attention. On the other hand, if I remember my bar etiquette correctly, later in the evening the equation changes and attractive isn’t as important as it is earlier.

About this time I discovered Management had a few undisclosed skeletons of her own. Can you believe she had never been in a bar? Had she told me that before we were married it might have changed things. I might have thought she was incredibly innocent and have not wanted to corrupt her but then again probably not. Or I might have thought she was hiding something but again probably not.

In any case, I was never a fan of meeting women in bars so I’m glad she wasn’t there for me to meet. Besides when I was doing my research on bars she was only 11 years old. Even with my best creative ID it might have been difficult for an 11-year-old to get in.

You know, I could have saved a lot of time by just getting her to agree we would ignore everything that happened to either of us between 1975 and 1985.