EXTENDED FAMILY

MY WIFE'S FAMILY AT ITS WORST:
Typical kookiness and social awkwardness alleviated by genuine charm, love and understanding.

MY STRIPPER EX-GIRLFRIEND'S FAMILY AT ITS BEST:
ME: You feeling okay?
CHIVAS: Yeah, sweetie.

ME: It's just that...I want you to know I'm here for you and especially afterward, if things are uncomfortable. We can talk.
CHIVAS: What're you talking about?

ME: You know, what he did to you.
CHIVAS: And what exactly did he do to me?

ME: You said he molested you.
[Chivas's father and his new girlfriend, who's younger than Chivas and looks almost exactly like Chivas, enter the Sizzler where we're meeting for dinner.]

CHIVAS: What the fuck are you talking about?! When the fuck did I say that?
ME: Last n...

CHIVAS'S DAD: What're you hollerin' about, doodlebug?
CHIVAS: He says I told him you fucked me!
CHIVAS'S DAD: That was a nightmare you had! We agreed! [To me] Who the fuck are you?

CHIVAS: Who's this bitch?
CHIVAS'S DAD'S GIRLFRIEND: Cowgirl with a bomb-ass pussy, that's who.
[Chivas throws pepper mill at no one.]

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, IN THE END

MY WIFE AT HER WORST:
Has taught me the past is dead, the future is uncertain and all we can truly know, or come close to knowing, is the present.

MY STRIPPER EX-GIRLFRIEND AT HER BEST:
If you go down on a girl or leave her a note saying you miss her or don't pay her rent, you're a faggot.

It took only two months of my dating a stripper to appreciate what a miracle my wife is. And I didn't meet my wife until three years after I got my -stripper girlfriend's final, typo-heavy text message saying she was flying to "arJenteena" with a "music band." "Watch out for all the Nazi Hitlers!" I furiously texted back. Alas, she was gone.

I'd like to think she's still out there, perhaps not in arJenteena but somewhere else, Bolivia for example, giving some other poor fool a lesson he will never forget and mentioning casually, in her offhanded way, that her dad may or may not have molested her.