The Assface Chronicles - Screen So Soft

Last night I talked to my best friend Amy on the phone for a long time. We don't get to do that very often these days as she is the mother (and new step mother) of 3 unruly and obnoxious teenagers. Talking to her for any length of time is glorious and certainly I always take whatever time she can give, but last night was an extra 2 hour after school special. I was over the moon.

First of all she started off her conversation with me as she often does by declaring her ex-husband Assface to be an even bigger dickhead than he was the last time I spoke to her and then she tells me of his crazy antics and I agree with her that yes, indeed somehow he has become a bigger dickhead than he was before. Only last night I analyzed why he keeps becoming an increasingly large clot and here is my theory and a list of examples:

1. Assface no longer has Amy to stop him from doing asinine things like wear a suit, carry a briefcase and generally behave like a self righteous stiff when proctoring their daughters piano competition at OSU so that everyone mistakes him for a judge.

2. She is no longer around to pull him away when he has overstayed his welcome when visiting friends and trust me he needs it. The man is missing the natural ability to tell when he is boring the snot out of people in addition to being too thick to take polite hints that people would like to go to bed, thus resulting (we heard stories thru the grapevine) in slamming doors and situations escalating to near violence (being brusquely escorted to his car by the elbow) and tearfully told in plain English (after many hints were dropped) that he must leave.

OK. I made up the part about the elbow escort, but all the rest is true.

When they were still married I always took the direct approach with Assface, having learned of his handicap early on and even then it didn't always work.

Me (smiling, with one eyebrow raised: ALLrighty Assface GET OUT OF HERE...

Assface: 010101010101

Me: I mean it dude - VA MINOS - Adios Muchacho... On yer way...

Assface: 00011110000101001

Me: I'm shutting the door now. I have to go take a shit so please leave.

Assface: 000011100011110001

You get the picture. By the way Assface speaks in a low, inaudible monotone that is remarkably similar to what I imagine binary sounds like.

3. He no longer has Amy around to give a list of 25 good reasons why you don't allow your daughter to have a sleep over at the neighbor's who have the police and social services visiting 3 times a week and then act surprised when your child ends up with head lice.

There are lots of things that he still does that Amy was never able to talk him out of when they were married like wearing black socks with shorts and spraying every surface of his home with Skin So Soft in the summertime for it's supposed bug repellent properties.

Notoriously, Assface once spent over an hour obsessively spraying every inch of the screens of the screened in porch of their old house with Skin So Soft before a BBQ. For those of you unfamiliar with Avon's line of products, Skin So Soft is a spray-on oil conconction - for human skin.

I don't really know if it kept the bugs away, but it rendered every doorknob unturnable, caused every guest at the party to slip upon the oily surface of the porch floor and Dan and I to giggle incessantly (and to this day) about the supple, touchable nature of the porch screens and forever think of the substance as "Screen So Soft".