I'm boggled

Thursday, 2:31 pm

By Kate

Apr

26

2007

I turned the television on last night. Yep, I did. And the very first thing to cross my screen was a clip for the upcoming local news.

With this image:

And a blurb about a husband who had cheated on his wife with ten women in five years. He put up $10,000 worth of billboards with his and his wife’s names, including their last name. According to the news clip, he’s found religion and he’s asking for her forgiveness.

I thought, more power to her if she can. I’m not one to celebrate the airing of family laundry on a half dozen billboards, but mileage varies. From my own perspective, if I discovered my name plastered on billboards like that, I’d be inclined to want to a) strangle him for wasting $10,000 and making sure that my name became a household word in America because of his peccadilloes b) drag his sorry butt to the doctor to make sure he’s not harboring any STDs and c) move far, far away where no one knows me.

I also wondered if he did it because he’d had a sincere change of heart or if he got caught.

This morning I tracked the story down to a newspaper in Florida. Why that is local news, I don’t know. Anyway, it looks as if he sort of got caught and sort of had a change of heart. They aren’t mutually exclusive incidents, I’d suspect. Cheating for ten years, but with ten women in one five year period. I guess that’s an important detail of the story. It’s obviously not a one time fling type of deal. He picked up women at stop lights and bars during lunch. How does a guy pick up women at a stop light? Apparently a motorcycle helps.

My local news segment said that his wife accepted his apology. I figured that glossed over a few details. The newspaper story fills in a few of them. I’m not sure “apology accepted!” is quite how it worked out. But this woman is willing to give him another chance. With a certain amount of reservation. And no more billboards, please.

I’d be curious to see a follow up story on this in about a year. I’d like to say that she’s a genuinely giving and generous woman. Probably a better woman than I. Maybe so. Plastering my name on billboards would be the final insult for me. That.would.be.it. The end of the story.