{"id":11697,"date":"2010-03-31T23:53:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T06:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=11697"},"modified":"2010-06-26T07:52:44","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T14:52:44","slug":"the-sad-story-of-how-my-wife-my-family-and-my-own-life-were-devastated-by-the-the-unhappy-effects-of-sad-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/11697\/the-sad-story-of-how-my-wife-my-family-and-my-own-life-were-devastated-by-the-the-unhappy-effects-of-sad-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"The sad story of how my wife, my family and my own life were devastated by the the unhappy effects of… sad stories…"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a certain age, you come to feel you’ve got a pretty tight bead on things. Wife, home, kids, job — everything just seems to come together. But then you find out that you’ve built your life on solid quicksand.<\/p>\n

I’ll tell you my story. I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s as true as last night’s TV news. You see, my whole world came crashing down around my ears because of a peril I had never thought to fear — until it was too late.<\/p>\n

That peril? Anecdote addiction.<\/p>\n

There I was, Joe Normal, watching re-runs and waiting for the game to come on, when my wife would relate some juicy bit of gossip she’d heard at the beauty parlor. Only to her it was more than that. Not just a story — a symptom, a syndrome.<\/em><\/p>\n

First it was just an anecdote now and then. Always blown way out of proportion, but, hey, it’s just small-talk, right?<\/p>\n

But then the stories started coming thick and fast. And they always seemed to be connected, somehow, in my loving wife’s fertile mind. And before you knew it, she started coming up with solutions, prescriptions, Rube Goldberg contraptions that, she thought, would ameliorate these imaginary syndromes.<\/p>\n

Well, kitchen-table schemes are one thing, but, before long, she had graduated to movements, slogans, web sites, bogus academic studies buttressed by bogus academic conferences — the works.<\/p>\n

And through all this turmoil, our mariage was going straight down the tubes. We went from home-cooked meals to frozen food, thus to leave her time for picketing and activism. The children learned to dress themselves from the dirty clothes hamper, their mother was so distracted. And as for our sex life — well, you do the math.<\/p>\n

And yet through all this, I was in denial. “Where’s the harm?” I would ask myself. After all, the entire country is addicted to anecdotes. We’ll stare cold, hard facts right in the face, denying them utterly in preference to a carefully-crafted sob-story. If it weren’t for treacly anecdotes, there would be no news business, no entertainment industry, no politics in America.<\/p>\n

And, of course, it was Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a certain age, you come to feel you’ve got a pretty tight bead on things. Wife, home, kids, job — everything just seems to come together. But then you find out that you’ve built your life on solid quicksand. I’ll tell you my story. I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251,13,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-big-mother","7":"category-casual-friday","8":"category-group-therapy","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13786,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13786\/christmas-at-the-cemetery-with-bubba\/","url_meta":{"origin":11697,"position":0},"title":"Christmas at the cemetery — with Bubba","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie story December 25, 1998 \u2013 Christmas Day If you want to hear your thoughts echo into a perfect silence \u2013 go to the cemetery. I do it a lot, actually, not to be too terribly morbid. Potter\u2019s fields and VA graveyards and tidy middle-class golf courses\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":597,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/597\/the-zillowcom-shake-down-at-last-a-discouraging-word-about-ncrc\/","url_meta":{"origin":11697,"position":1},"title":"The Zillow.com shake-down: At last a discouraging word about NCRC . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"All right, it might be a little naive, but it's something. From the Square Feet Blog at the San Jose Mercury News:So why has the NCRC decided to announce that Zillow is putting the American Dream in peril? What do you think? Genuine concern for consumers, or or just pining\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12350,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/12350\/there-are-only-four-things-certain-since-social-progress-began\/","url_meta":{"origin":11697,"position":2},"title":"There are Only Four Things Certain Since Social Progress Began","author":"Sean Purcell","date":"June 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(alternatively entitled - with all due apologies) Though I've Belted\u00a0You and\u00a0Flayed You, By the Livin' Gawd\u00a0That Made You; You've Made a Worser Man of Me, Socialism \u00a0 \"And a\u00a0woman is only a\u00a0woman, but a good\u00a0cigar is a smoke\"\u00a0 (from The Betrothed).\u00a0 I have loved Rudyard Kipling from the very first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Mother"","block_context":{"text":"Big Mother","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/big-mother\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3210,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3210\/cinderellas-memories-of-the-zoo\/","url_meta":{"origin":11697,"position":3},"title":"Cinderella’s memories of the zoo","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie story Cinderella was in a snit, and who could blame her? She was an orphan swarmed by a family of strangers, accidental intimates, pushy and intrusive and unwelcome. And the most distant stranger of all was the original Prince Charming, the man she had expected would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egoism in Action"","block_context":{"text":"Egoism in Action","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/egoism-in-action\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4145,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/4145\/every-picture-tells-a-story-orphaned-lockboxes\/","url_meta":{"origin":11697,"position":4},"title":"Every picture tells a story: Orphaned lockboxes…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I see this all the time lately. The blue lockboxes are Supra boxes. They cost about $75 each. The vendor box and the front blue box belong to the current lister of the home. We do our homes this way, too, with a Supra box for Realtors, appraisers and inspectors\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1813,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1813\/if-your-wife-doesnt-nag-you-enough-sign-up-for-pingme\/","url_meta":{"origin":11697,"position":5},"title":"If your wife doesn’t nag you enough, sign up for PingMe!","author":"Lani Anglin","date":"August 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Don't worry, my husband doesn't need this service; I've got it covered! PingMe.com is a free reminder system that reminds me of an advancement on the Outlook calendar function. I typically set up Outlook \"reminders\" for everything ranging from \"follow up on Lakeline listing\" to \"email April\" but get irritated\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12418,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11697\/revisions\/12418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}