My Life as Cliché

I've always toed the line. Kept my nose clean. Been on the up-and-up. Yep, I always kept it together.

So when she said, "I love you," I figured what was good for the goose was good for the gander. I was happy as white on rice. I was head-over-heels for, and madly in love with, her. Me an' my gal. We'd make a good team.

We settled into a little house with a white picket fence. Our good fence made us good neighbors. We lived the sweet life. Lived off the fatted pig.

We opened joint bank accounts. We had life insurance on each other. We bought a funeral plot. We invested but, first, in each other. We made do.

But three's a crowd. So, when the monthly bill was late, we got married in a fever. Was ignorance bliss? How long would I "give it?" Till death did we part?

At first I hadn't seen the forest for the trees. Trees like ... independence, self-indulgence, and deciding just whose line to toe. I decided to be a man. To step it up and stand on my own two feet. Rise to the occasion! Shouldn't the world be my oyster? Hadn't I paid my dues? I had ants in my pants.

Therein brewed trouble in Paradise. All that glittering wasn't gold.

She continued in her family way. However, our bun in the oven was a bad egg. Coming out hell-on-wheels, it got so we didn't know whether we were coming or going.

He grew up fast and furious and came of age. He told me a secret a little bird had whispered to him. At first I couldn't believe my own ears. But he signed me up on what he was thinking, because there's many a slip 'tween the tongue and the lip.

Who needs her? That was his secret. I was scared shitless.

When she turned up dead, he reminded me of the life insurance policy I had on her. Now I wondered, was it possible to mourn while laughing all the way to the bank? No, becasue the joke was on me. His little bird was still singin'.