Claire Conger

I didn’t go snowboarding this week because I didn’t like the weather report, which turned out to be too inaccurate for trip-planning purposes. Grr!

So instead, I went to yoga class. Riding my bike home, who should I encounter riding his bike to work? None other than Pseudo Boyfriend #2, the one whose calls this January I did not return.

Serendipity! (Deepak Chopra‘s comos are in full production. Gotta pay attention when they send you a message!)

Pseudo Boyfriend was looking mighty cute in his khaki pants and matching leather bomber jacket.

He was like, What happened? Why did you disappear? So I told him, again: My poor little brain has to defend itself against his bevy of facts, many of which are simply not true. And when I challenge one of his facts, he makes up logic so he’ll be right.

Pseudo Boyfriend #2 has quite a need for control, so he conjures logic that seems to keep the world in order. (I didn’t get quite that far, talking to him this morning.)

Now logic gets you into trouble plenty because there’s usually some twist to the facts, about which you know nothing, that renders your whole conjugation useless. (I learned this years ago working on legacy systems in the banking industry: There’s always something you don’t know and it’s never the way you want it to be.)

Anyway, ole Pseudo #2, on my explaining this him, didn’t miss a trick. He revised the history around conversations we’ve had in which he explained to me facts that are not true. I learned this trick—revision of history—as a kid from my big sister, who used to pull it on me all the time. As a conversational tactic it destroys efforts to communicate.

Not to be daunted, I told him he was revising history. He denied it. Quelle surprise!

Not to be outdone, he started on my faults. (Oooo, probably true. Like William Hurt’s character Macon in The Accidental Tourist—whose family thinks his dog-trainer girlfriend (played by Geena Davis) lacks the sophistication both he and they, all idiosyncratic to the point of being certifiable,* deserve—I’ll have to admit I’m no prize.)

And like William Hurt, ole Pseudo was looking mighty cute, so I said maybe I’d allow him to take me to a movie, and yes, I would take his call.

* Being “certifiable” in American English means you have the characteristics required to be committed against your will to an insane asylum. Here I exaggerate Macon’s family problems. Just a little.