Breaking Up is (Even) Hard(er) to Do

Living as we do in this age of miracles and wonders, why should I be surprised that we've applied so many of our technological innovations in single minded pursuit of making one another unhappy, or more unhappy (as the case may be)?

That we're also very good at it is one of those 'goes to show' moments, I guess. I can dimly remember being single (not that I was ever any good at it and not that any woman whom I may have known during that period of our lives just looked up wistfully and wondered 'what might have been?') and I have no sense of nostalgia or regret.

I'm only good at marriage stuff now because the woman I married is so excellent at it. I was never that 'take a look at my girlfriend' guy in prep school and listening to all the purple prose and other prolix praise of Saturday nights past while changing for PE was more of a torture than a treat.

My social life, probably like yours, was equal parts fumble and mumble and not a time period I regard with any sort of fondness. I never really knew when I was going out with someone on a steady basis and/or when we had broken up. This made for some awkward moments tightly compacted so that each minute felt like a year but in a news item I fell across in the New York Times, there is now, thanks to converging technologies life after "'tis better to have loved, and lost" but at least for some, without he better part.

 In a culture that has break-up and make-up sex, why am I not surprised we're #1 in revenge porn websites? Truth to tell, I don't actually know that we are #1 but suspect we're in the Top Five; I truly believe we have a knack for this kind of thing and when I say "we" I mean "you".

Old lovers used to fade away and become shadows-I can remember doing things like changing how I walked home from school to avoid going past a certain house or a particular hang-out after whatever I had (don't think 'relatiosnhip' was the in-vogue word then) had ended.

Now, I guess I'd just bulldoze the house down and get misty-eyed as people screamed until the emergency rescue folks showed up. As Neil Sedaka a moment as all of this might be-I'm thinking of the formerly most faded and jaded man on the planet and his words of, well not exactly solace or consolation. I've heard retribution can be served slightly warm with perhaps a white wine. The chill happens later.
 -bill kenny