I tend to forget sometimes that people in my life know other people in my life; complicating that is that some of the people in my life forget that they know other people who used to be in my life and that those other people might be lurking online and reading their blogs, and hence will eventually find mine.

Is that convoluted, or not?

I’ve known Thumper since seventh grade; as a result, she’s known my ex-wife as long as I have, and they used to email occasionally. As it tends to happen sometimes, their communications waned and eventually stopped, and Thump didn’t think much about it. Kathy, however, continued to read her blog.

Thump mentioned my blog, Kathy followed the link, and as a consequence learned that I sometimes think of her as being batshit crazy. She emailed Thump, Thump emailed me, I emailed Kathy; it could have been a rerun of eighth grade when we passed notes back and forth via other friends, stopping just short of the cliché of Do you like me? Check yes or no although it might be reasonable to assume that notes these days would substitute the word hate for the word like.

I may have mentioned that I do not hate my ex-wife. I may not have mentioned that there were a few times post-divorce, and after I married Char, that she opened her home to us when we needed a place to stay while visiting my parents (to remove some of the creepiness, she stayed elsewhere, but was very generous in letting us crash there, down the street from my parents’.) She and Char even went to lunch together and without me while we were there. After I moved my parents here, however, we had fewer reasons to communicate, and eventually got to where we rarely heard from each other.

When Kathy contacted Thump it was only to ask if Char was doing as well as we were implying; it was not to complain about anything I have said about her, although she would be within her rights to take umbrage over the fact that I did refer to her as batshit crazy. I cringed when she mentioned it, because it was not exactly fair; she might have been a bit crazy but she was never crazy, not in the stereotypical, malicious, I-hate-your-sorry-ass way.

She has retained her sense of humor over the years and does not take offense. Still, I apologize for it; she doesn’t deserve to be presumed as a vindictive and partly insane ex. Our marriage was what it was and ended when it was supposed to. We’re both happier where we are now than where we were twenty years ago. Leaving me was not an act of insanity on her part; it’s only the timing of telling me she had filed for divorce that has compelled me to describe her as crazy.

So to be fair, I am publicly apologizing for telling the world that my ex is bat shit crazy. She’s not, and it was wrong of me to say she is.