I joke about my many marriages, but the fact is I’ve only been married twice and divorced twice. You’d be surprised: some peoples’ ratios aren’t balanced.

The aberrations are the “never-married-but-legally-divorced” folks (who have fractional ratios), and the polygamists (whose ratio is multiple).

Anyway, it’s highly ironic that my highly-civilized, highly-respectable mother has been married considerably more times than I have and would only consider sharing her secret number with a potential marriage partner – but I have no doubt she’d be honest about it. She’s VERY nice. Nice people are divorced, too.

So I don’t know why she finds it appalling when I bring up her prior marriages – even to my own father, who she married when they were both 19.

Maybe the reason I feel like I’ve been married and divorced so many times is because I have? Probably also why I think about marriage in mathematical terms.

I’m sure it’s all compounded because, as a childless person, I haven’t had the opportunity to rewrite history by living vicariously through my children.

The worst part is that I feel there’s NOTHING I can’t do to convert this Giant Heap of Pain into ANYTHING to prevent MY Fate from becoming the DEFAULT Adult Fate. And what almost kills me is that I can’t do anything to prevent it from becoming the Default CHILD Fate, either.