Cool - they used my question! This calls for a repost! Here's the post that inspired the question:

Long ago in a galaxy far away called Arkansas, there lived a spunky girl who, after a painful breakup with her high school sweetheart, vowed to never get married. Ah, those heady days of seventeen when the world was my oyster and I knew all there was to know of life! To borrow a word from k8t, *snork*. Don't we all think we're so smart at that age? I'd love to have that kind of confidence again, but please don't make me relive those teen years.

I went along just fine for several years. I moved to Fayetteville with my parents and worked in my dad's store for awhile, learning about the retail business, cashiering and light bookkeeping in the process. Then I got the world's crappiest job at the University of Arkansas Printing Services, working in the book bindery. I hated that job and ended up walking out after about a year and finding a much better job at a pharmacy. During this period I also bought a car, taught myself to drive and moved out of my parents' house into a shabby apartment on the edge of the college campus with my cousin Lynda. I dated a few boys, but never felt more than mildly interested in them.

My life changed when my younger sister and her friend decided they wanted to be in The Great Passion Play for the summer, but needed transportation. They convinced Lynda to drive them and she also joined the cast of the play. They had so much fun I decided to do it with them the next year. Five nights a week we'd all pile into either Lynda's or my car and drive fifty miles to Eureka Springs where we would check what part we were assigned to that night, pick up our costumes and spend two hours helping reenact Christ's last week on earth. There were four cast rooms and we were in the best one; Christ and the disciples were in that room, the Mary group, and all the character roles. On different nights of the week I might be a Herod musician, a leper, a harlot, or a hag. After a year or two I moved up into the Mary group where I usually played Mary Magdelene, but occasionally was one of the silent Marys who had invisible little jobs to do. For instance, the Mary in the red costume carried Christ's red sash over her arm when he had to do a quick costume change sans dressing room. There were lots of fun little tricks like that. The actors all pantomimed; the dialog was recorded, so we had to always be on our marks, but there was a lot of goofing off on set that the audience never noticed. When I was in a character role, it was for the two street scenes. After that I changed into a "street" costume and became part of the mob. We would run up the hill with real torches to arrest Jesus in the garden. (Maybe someday I'll post about the night I nearly burned the set down.) We would then follow the mean old Sanhedrin guards back down the hill for the trial scenes. The guards would stand in front of the crowd with their spears held out like barricades. I was a ham, so I'd always push up to the front of the crowd and try to break through the line of guards while shaking my fist and yelling epithets like, "POTATO!" or "CARROTS!" There was one particular guard who had funny, expressive, googly eyes and I always tried to get him to laugh or force him to push me back into the crowd.

Time passed. Lynda and I moved to an apartment a bit further from campus, gave Brett a key and he hung out there between classes. He enjoyed working for my dad, learning about retail and listening to Dad's many stories. Then my sister entered into her year of rebellion. Oy vey. One of her first acts, in early January, was to break up with Brett. She was always a bit of a drama queen and the morning after the break-up she was moping around the house in her nightgown, crying and looking for sympathy. My dad asked her what was wrong.

"Brett and I broke up."
"Did you break up with him or did he break up with you?"
"I broke up with him."
"Well what are you crying for? You got what you wanted, you should be the happiest person on earth right now! Quit crying and go put some clothes on."

My dad always knew just what to say. Later that day I stopped by my parents' house and Dad cornered me. "That Brett is a nice young man. You should pick him up on the rebound."

And the rest, as they say, is history. We started dating in February, got engaged in July and were married in September. We will celebrate our 28th anniversary this year.


If anyone reading this married your sister's ex after picking him up on the rebound on the advice of your father, please leave a comment. Sometimes I feel so alone...



   

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