Y’all, my Aunt Tookie, I swear I don’t know what Imma do with her. You ever want to feel bad for a person because they’ve been treated awfully, but they just won’t stop getting in their own way? Aunt Tookie is one such lady.
About eight years ago, she got married to this man we all knew was trouble, but he just had her wrapped around his big ol’ sausage finger. (I wish I hadn’t used sausage there because it’s gonna make me comparing him to a sentient boisterous ham fall flatter than it should. I haven’t learned everything there is to know about comedy yet, but I do know that two pork puns is often one too many. I digress.)
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
He was a businessman, and Aunt Tookie was impressed by that. She reckoned this man could run their marriage like a business, and it would be smooth sailing. Turns out that one doesn’t really have a thing to do with the other. We told her, “Tookie, it’s true that he’s a businessman, but that word isn’t synonymous with good or honest!” He certainly wasn’t either of those.
Along with his many side hustles, he was a real estate man. This gave him great power, but he ignored the great responsibility (yes, I’m a Spider-Man fan). He was horrible to his tenants, and arguably even worse to the contractors he hired to do the building and maintenance for his properties. When it came time to pay the bill, he’d often pay them less than he had promised. He knew they’d have no choice on account of the bills they had for renting equipment and buying supplies, and they sure couldn’t afford one of the fancy lawyers his daddy was friends with.
Or, worse yet, he’d just skip out on the bill entirely. What you and I would call immoral behavior, he just called good business. And Tookie went right along with it because of the life he had promised her. Promises he never actually delivered on, but she knew he’d get around to it once he could get all his haters and detractors out of the way!
That’s when the cheating started. Tookie could’ve handled it if it was with someone like her, but it was, of all people, with a Russian. He just couldn’t get enough of that Russian. Some might say he was just trying to make business deals in Russia, but clearly he was in love.
Still, Tookie stood by his side because, at the end of the day, they still had one great thing in common: They both hated Mexicans. They said racist things about a whole lot of other people, don’t get me wrong, but Tookie never got invited to her neighbor Julio’s parties because she complained about how the food had too much flavor. Her husband promised that he was going to commission Julio to build a huge fence between their houses and then not pay him for the job. Little hearts appeared where her pupils once sat.
It seemed there was nothing this horrible man could do that was bad enough to get Tookie to leave. That is until she got sick. Aunt Tookie came down with a horrible cough, and her energy was so wiped that she spent days in bed. He explained that it was probably something she ate down at the Chinese buffet and she’d be over it in a week. But she wasn’t. It got worse, and she desperately needed medical attention. Not only did this man not drive her to the hospital, but he waxed on and on about how the doctors don’t know anything and that he himself, though having never spent a day in medical school, was more qualified to advise her. He gave her some pills that belonged to her horse. And then he went golfing.
This, fortunately, brought Aunt Tookie to her senses. Made her realize he truly cared only for himself. She left him for an older man, and, though the older man wasn’t perfect, things got better for Tookie, even if she didn’t realize it. The price of eggs had stabilized and gas had come down. But Julio was still there.
Welp, the old man left, and, instead of taking some time to process it or, God forbid, looking for a decent person to spend the rest of her life with, Tookie got back with the good-for-nothing swindler who had mistreated her all those years!
“It will be different this time! He has changed! He cares about me now. He said so.”
Sigh.
That’s what they always say isn’t it?
You should never get back together with an ex. There was a reason you broke up, and it wasn’t because things were going great.
That’s what America did. I think things are going to be worse this time around. He’s still in love with the Russian, but his friends are much worse. Not one of them seems to care about America.
Congrats, everyone. Just don’t ask me to dance at the reception.
Corey Ryan Forrester is a comedian from Chickamauga. He is the co-author of “The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the Dark” and “Round Here and Over Yonder: A Front Porch Travel Guide by Two Progressive Hillbillies (Yes, That’s a Thing.),” and a co-host of the podcasts “wellRED” and “Puttin’ On Airs.”
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