And then, without so much as a hint it was coming, life just seemed to punch me hard in the face. Twenty years would pass before I’d be able to write about ME again. Life became more about the experience than it was about documenting it – at least for a while anyway. The compulsive habit of keeping notes of MY mundane daily adventures was replaced with the hobby of documenting the growth, development, and adventures of someone far more interesting and worth documentation - my daughter.

Wait. Let’s put the horse back in front of the cart. Amanda’s birth would be a few years off from where we last left the story. The year was 1988. Rhonda and I were living together in the rent house on Macrae Street in Haltom City. Savvy had been broken up for a couple of years and I’d managed to rack up two semesters of college at UTA (with a 4.0 grade point average I might add!)  Rhonda was well into her career working for AT&T (still Southwestern Bell at the time) and I was making a decent living by working full time doing personal appearances as Ronald McDonald for the hamburger dynasty.

We’d dodged a big breakup, only to have the topic of marriage put squarely on the table. It had been Rhonda’s idea, and the way it came up would likely seem unusual for most, but was quite typical for us. One evening while watching TV, Rhonda asked if I had plans for October 29^th.  I just figured her favorite band, Styx, was coming to town. Or maybe one of our friends was having a Halloween party. I took the bait.

“Nothing I know of. Why?” I said.

The conversation ensued without either of us taking our eyes off the screen. She replied, “I thought we could get married that day.”

“Sure, I guess. Sounds good to me.” 

Seriously. Everyone knows that at this point, the young couple’s eyes are supposed to slowly and deliberately meet, followed by a tender embrace and romantic kissing, as the theme from Love Story begins to play. We’ve all seen it hundreds of times in those made-for-TV movies but that’s not how it went down with us. In our case there was no real emotion, other than my surprise, which I kept in check so that I wouldn’t accidentally worry her that perhaps I wasn’t into the idea of making it legal. Yes sir - no emotion.  No rose petals or candles or romance. Nobody went down on one knee. There had been no clandestine visits to jewelers. It was simply another of many calculated moves that Rhonda would pull from her playbook of life from time to time – like when she decided it was time for us to move in together with Jim, to move out together to Macrae Street, to buy a car, or even to have a child. This isn’t to say those were bad things, or that Rhonda was a bad person for coming up with them. She was clearly the mover and shaker of the relationship when it came to calculated events on the TIMELINE of our lives. She had to maintain a sense of urgency for two.

I don’t know what in the hell got into that girl to make her want to marry me. At the time I didn’t dwell on it too much except perhaps to have secretly wished we could have just continued on as we had been, without all the formalities and commitments of marriage. I didn’t realize it but I was still socially retarded from my years of being in bands. In my mind I thought and reasoned like a lazy 20 year old, taking life day to day with plenty of time to do the marriage thing later. But in fact, I was 33 years old and time was running out. My dad had been 36 when I was born so there was still time to worry about all that stuff later. So many things rushed through my mind in the matter of only a few seconds, but none of it stuck. I shrugged and agreed that getting married sounded like a great idea. It only took 30 seconds or so for my mind to wrap around – and embrace the concept.

My parents were thrilled at the news and I asked dad to be my best man. My mom began communicating with Rhonda’s mom – and stepmother – about food and decorations. Roger, Rhonda’s dad, couldn’t hide the fact that my mom was getting on his nerves at times, but it was a big deal for her to be involved and I stayed out of it all.

The wedding would take place at Roger’s home in North Richland Hills, less than two miles from where Rhonda and I were living on Macrae Street in Haltom City.  It was like most other weddings, but a few things stick out in my mind more than others. My cousin RJ showed up wearing a nice suit, with worn out tennis shoes. Classic RJ. There was a problem with the music when the big church organ setting on the digital keyboard got reset to a default piano, which sounded like a child’s toy. Brenda, a co-worker and friend of Rhonda’s, had already begun playing the wedding march before noticing the setting had been changed. (I had to come back years later and redo the music in the wedding video to make it watch able.)   

We hired a preacher out of the Yellow Pages. He turned out to be perfect. Cliff Valentine shot video and Allison caught the bouquet. Paul Bruton had experience as a professional photographer and was hired to shoot the photos. (A few months later I mentioned to Paul that I didn’t like the way I looked in the wedding photos. His response was, “If you take a picture of an orangutan – you get a picture of an orangutan.” Now there’s a great marketing slogan if I ever heard one!)

The video of everyone milling around during the various family portraits shows my dad looking as handsome as ever, smiling and joking around, not giving a clue of how bad he must have really felt due to his battle with prostate cancer. I could tell that both my parents were extremely proud and happy that I’d appeared to have made it out of the music business alive and was finally settling down. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t let myself go there. It would be like jumping out of a plane for the first time – or bungee jumping from a bridge. I would simply rehearse the moves best as I could – then go through with them. It was a little bit like when I got baptized as a child; there was an expectation that I’d feel something profound that would somehow make me a better person when it was over. A sense was developing that perhaps being married would help carry me to a new and better place in my life. But deep in the back of my mind, there was also a sense that it was something I would have to go through sooner or later anyway, so why not go ahead and get it out of the way? 

It all came down to one thing. It was what Rhonda wanted. And when Rhonda wanted something it usually came to pass. Now she wanted to be married and there we were, in her dad’s house with a rented preacher and me in a rented tux.

By the time we said our “I Do’s”, Rhonda and I had already been more or less living together for a few years. We weren’t big on intimacy or romance, but rather just enjoyed each other’s company as close friends. We’d ended up together somehow and there was no turning back. Two days after the wedding, we would be off to Puerto Vallarta for our honeymoon so going home that night after the wedding was like going home from a party at a friend’s house. I invited a few friends and family members over for a post-wedding party. Rhonda went on to bed and I stayed up late as usual.

I can remember everything about my trip to Puerto Vallarta with Marty back in 1982, but recall very little about our honeymoon there in ‘88, other than the fact that I got sick. Oh, we made some friends that we’d stay in touch with over the years, and I remember everyone hanging spoons from their noses at dinner one night, but not much else. I talked Rhonda into Puerto Vallarta. If she’d had her way we would’ve gone to Cancun. It was a typical example of how different our tastes were about some things. In hindsight, we might have had a much better time if we’d gone to Cancun. Puerto Vallarta wasn’t the same as I’d remembered it. Maybe it was because I was single when I’d gone before.  Back then it had been rich with romance and mystery. Suddenly I was keenly aware of not having a television in the hotel room.

Coming Soon: Chapter 12

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