This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Ever text messaged your boyfriend to get the reply, "Johnnie* doesn't have his phone any more. He's in jail."? No? Well, it happens. And it just happened to my little sister last night.

So what did she do? She called her boyfriend's sister to find out what was going on. Missy informed my sister that Johnnie had been arrested for grand theft auto, writing bad checks, and some other miscellaneous charge.

My sister was suddenly confused. . . "But? Missy, he said he got that car from the government as part of the hurricane relief." "The car with the Texas license plates?" "Yeah. . ." "Honey, he's never lived in New Orleans. That car was stolen."

And suddenly the floodgates had opened. The daughter he claimed died in the hurricane? She's alive and well in our very own hometown--along with her two sisters. The twin sister he claimed died in the hurricane? Non-existent. He has two half-sisters right here and he was falsely claiming they were adopted. Born in Italy, adopted by missionaries and raised in Brazil? Hardly. Once again, welcome to an ordinary life in the Midwest.

Perhaps most importantly, the thousand dollars that my sister handed him to invest in the highly lucrative currency trade? Vanished. Most likely never to be seen again. Because she can't prove anything. Gotta love con artists.

Now, I've told you about Kevin before--the lying cheating 31-year-old husband and father. And now you know about Johnnie the Jackass. But have I ever told you about Billy the Bastard?

Bill was my mother's third husband. He seemed too good to be true. He was a church-goer, he was a family man--introducing us to his aunt and cousins--, he was friendly, and he was a hardworker. After six weeks of dating/bumping uglies, he and my mother were engaged.

Suddenly a whirlwind descended upon us like the rage of a spoiled two-year-old, flipping out in the store because his mother is buying generic peanut butter. Luckily for us, the proverbial mother in this situation thought the tantrum was cute and so we all went along with the wedding planning process in the best of moods. We were buying dresses and flowers and centerpieces and candles and the list went on and on.

My mother had her fairy tale wedding. Complete with the Brothers Grimm-style ending.

After four months, things had fallen apart. Credit card statements were popping up with weird charges. The bank account was constantly overdrawn. Bill couldn't help my sister with her sixth-grade math homework but supposedly had a degree in mathematics. Bill supposedly played college football but couldn't carry a conversation about football with people who never played after graduating high school. Money was vanishing from our bedrooms. Pets had been assaulted and had disappeared. My brother had been bodyslammed. And my mother had found a briefcase full of forged signatures and stolen credit/membership cards of various sorts.

Bill was asked to leave. Needless to say, he wasn't happy about that, and the whole thing went downhill quickly. We called his ex-wife in Florida only to find out that he had been in and out of jail, there were warrants for his arrest in Florida, he had beat his wife and eldest son such that they were hospitalized after his ex asked him to leave, and my mom was approximately the fortieth woman to contact the ex after being conned. Warm and fuzzy feeling inside? No. Restraining order? Definitely.

Let's recap: My mother married a con artist. My sister handed a thousand dollars cash to a con artist. And I dated a married man, falling for every single one of his lies.

We're all intelligent women. (I know--you have every reason to doubt the validity of that statement, but you're just gonna have to trust me here.) We're only stupid when it comes to relationships. It doesn't make any sense. So I've decided to declare that we have been cursed and just move on. Otherwise, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to get the Human Genome Project to take us on as a special case so they can locate the "fuck-me-over-I'm-stupid-and-will-believe-anything-you-say" gene. And then I'd have to advocate sterilization for all those who have it--if not euthanasia.

And wouldn't that be a terribly boring way to spend my life?

I thought so.





*Names have been changed to protect the guilty-ass SOB. Well, not so much to protect him as much as to protect myself from a lawsuit.