Send in the clowns

My problem? I cannot keep my mouth shut. I recall going to a comedy club in San Diego where a comic expressed the same thought. It went something like this....

Being a comedian can be hazardous. Like when I was in court for my divorce and we were going through the settlement, things seemed to be going well for me. The judge asked "Are there any children from this marriage?

And I piped up with "Judge, you gotta have sex to have kids!"

The rest of that evening was lost on me, possibly due to the number of drinks I downed but I think the concept took over my brain. I can't control it. My brain, that is. Or my mouth, it seems. I had, and still do, say stupid and embarrassing things at the most inappropriate times. I have always been this way. I don't do it in writing so much because I can do something you cannot do verbally... make it disappear, like it never happened.

I have tried to prevent it at times, a sort of pre-editing. My first wife, after we had split up but were not yet divorced (a prolonged period of frustration and acrimony), came home from a shopping expedition to find me chatting with her new roommate. She had undergone a make-over. Before I go further, you have to understand how I feel about make-up. I don't like it. I don't like the smell of it because of a traumatic incident in my childhood, I don't like the look of it when it is heavy though I appreciate it when it is subtle.

My wife looked like her make-up had been applied with a trowel. Seriously, it was so thick, it looked like a mask. It would have been fine in bright, glaring light but in the subdued shadows of the living room it was horrible. To me.

She asked me what I thought. I tried not to answer. I suggested she didn't want my opinion. I reminded her of my aversion to make-up. She insisted she wanted my "honest opinion."

I said, "You look like a clown."

She dashed, crying, from the room. I discreetly left the house.

I have since learned to bite my tongue but I still slip now and then. Don't we all?