Margit’s Note: I Break With Thee

By Margit Detweiler

(Graphic: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight.com)

As kids, my sister, brother and I used to listen to Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy album nonstop. (Thank you, Columbia Record and Tape Club.) One of our favorite quotes was his Wild and Crazy Guy Czechoslovakian character from SNL who described breaking up with his girlfriend thusly:

“You just walk up to the girl and say, ‘I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee’ …and then you throw dog poop on her shoes.”

We’d fall onto the floor in hysterics. Poop humor never fails.

But to this day, when I hear the phrase “break-up“ I think of that sketch every single time. (Those were some formative latchkey years). And, for a minute, I think, if only it were so easy. So final. So stinky.

More often, there’s ambivalence and avoidance and anything but a definitive doo-doo drop. You wait and mull and consider whether you’re making a colossal mistake. Or you wonder if there’s something better or simply different out there. But you’re safe here. You’ve been safe for years… and years. Don’t those years mean something? Should you just throw all that away? And then that nagging voice returns like a haunted house moan: GET OUT!

So you do. There are tears, desperate drunk dials, mopey Facebook stalks. And then, eventually, you wonder what the hell took you so long. Life on the other side is better and, if not right now, it will be. If we could only just expedite it with a little poop.

This week, we’re breaking us in two:

• Ruthie Ackerman starts a Break-Up Club
• Anonymous catches a cheater
• Annette Earling gives a family engagement ring new life
• Penny Wrenn is dumped but not demolished
• Tina Rowley breaks up with a bestie
• Susan Linney sees her exes everywhere
• And I am #SoOver these 42 things

It’s not you; it’s me,

Margit