Love is capricious and foolish-a brief true story.

[Vindekarr]

Just something that happened to me I figured was amusing enough to share.

 

Now, earlier this year my girlfirend of 8 years went off to study and a career in england while I went off to study and a career in australia. This left me alone for the time being.

 

Now, I'm not someone who is especialy vulnerable to fears. Spiders for example, some I wouldnt go near for safety reasons, but even then, it's not fear, it's caution. Snakes too, provided I've got the requisite bucket, pole, and thick leathers, I'm not scared of them either, and I would go so far as to say that pythons are extremely beautiul and graceful, and that some of them really have quite gental personalities if they are tame house snakes.

 

My biggest fear is large dogs. Only a few species too. It's guard dogs I dont like, those big, stupid horrible ridgebacks, mastiffs, rotweilers and pitbulls. having been attacked by supposedly "tame" family pet mts of these misbegotten kinds a number of times through my childhood, and with scars to prove it, I really dont like them.

 

For the last few week's I'd been talking with and seeing a nice local girl, she'd said she needed to borrow my house for a few days, so I obliged her. Coming home from work that day I was someone shocked. When I came in, a huge disgusting beast of a ridgeback was sprawled across my carpet, chewing on one of MY shoes, having ransacked the other. Now, I'm very tolerant, but I make a steadfast rule: my house, my rules, and that rule is: no warm blooded pets, EVER. If it's got warm blood, and it aint human, it's outside, and on a leash.

 

She knew perfectly well I'm scared of them, I'd told her the night before, no pets. never. She came in and told me to say hello to her "guest" and pointed at the dog, she said it was called bungo. Bungo got up from destroying my boot and growled at me, I picked up an umbrella and prepared to bonk bungo as it leapt. She yelled something at it and it quited, looking at my with those scewed sociopath eyes ridgebacks have. I gently guided her into the hall away from the horrible beast and calmly asked what the hell was going on. She said she'd "given the place a much needed cleanup" and "gotten rid of that horrible old deco". I then went into my study to find my totem poles were gone, my skull was gone, and so were my MANUSCRIPTS! AAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

NOTHING upsets a writer more than losing his manuscripts. These are like the sum of your achievments, your "saved games" if you will. No manuscript, and you have no book. The 'scripts are short disentangled notes, jotting, drawings and theories that you put together into a finalised novel, and they are mostly for showing to your publisher and advisors. So when a little girl plays house and throws out 5 years of manuscripts, even a man as calm as I get upset. I also found she hadnt been lying about "cleaning that trash out of the garage" My car, which I had spent an hour laying out the night before, had been heaped in the corner, some of the parts badly damaged.

 

At this point I felt the beginings of real anger. Some of the "trash" she'd thrown away was worth rather a lot of money. Especialy the car parts she'd just heaped in the corner. Many were custom forged for me by request and worth hundred and hundreds of dollars each. Her detroying them set me back thousands. I was able to rescue the manuscipts, but my totem poles really were gone, the skull was in the trash and damaged beyond repair, and the car, which relies heavily on custom forged parts, was set back months of work.

 

But worst of all she actualy felt proud of it. When I explained WHY my garage was full of bits of metal, she said I should have just bought a "real" car.

 

When I tried to explain to her that the reason I'd bough an old car to repair was because I could not stomach leaving such a beautiful historic artifact to rust to death on a scrap heap, she countered by saying it was old anyway, and making it abundantly clear that she didnt see any value in history whatsoever. And the skull of my science teacher had been a prize(I mean, it's his skull in that he bought it as a prize, best science student won it). The totem poles, decoration, and that I'd carved with a chainsaw in woodwork. Al destroyed by a little girl playing house. I told her that if she kept destroying my property, let alone very vaulable property, our relationship was over.

 

She said I'd screwed up my own life and that she was "doing me a favour" throwing my belongings in the street. I asked her to leave, and phoned the car spares company that forges replacement parts for old cars that dont get mande anymore. In total I had to replace $2.2K worth of damaged parts, all of them destroyed simply by carelessness in the name of caring.

 

If anyone see's a totem pole shaped like a stylised hydralisk at the rubbish tip, it's probably mine. This just underlines how screwed up the process of relationships is. And how stupid humans are. I say this now having learned it first hand, if you love someone, dont try and change their life to suit yours unless they really have a rpoblem, like an addiction. And for pete's sake! dont throw away their dis assembled car parts!