This is my mailbox.  As you can see, it’s bashed on one side, a wedding present from who we think was a bat-wielding redneck driving by our house the night of our wedding five years ago.  An act of malice, or just another Saturday night in the country?   We’ll never know.  What I do know is that Jake tried to fix it by bashing the metal back out from the inside.  You can see how successful that was.   Guess it’s hard to get a good swing from inside a mailbox.

I have fantasies about owning a new shiny un-crumpled Netflix box one day….maybe a stately castle or an illustritious horse, but I guess that would be like hanging a sign that says,  All Bats Welcome.

Some men look at porn.  

My husband looks at Truck Trader, which, for those of you not familiar with this august publication, is like a second bible for rednecks.  A sister magazine to the illustrious Auto Trader (immortalized in the movie Joe Dirt starring David Spade), Truck Trader is a compendium of big trucks for sale in any given region, and my husband has been getting off on its collection of sultry photographs more than usual lately.  

See, he’s in the market for a new hauling machine, one that is bigger, badder and more voluptuous than the one he currently rides in—a hefty 450 diesel power stroke Ford equipped with so many bells and whistles, and more flashing lights than a Vegas show sign.  He’s looking for a new work truck that has four to the floor chassis, a 550 diesel quadriphonic engine with laser quatro power stroke diesel hammer fire.  

Or something like that.  

Every time he starts telling me what he’s in the market for, I have to use my upmost concentration to cling to my brain cells or risk losing my neurons to the back of my skull.  I forget all train of thought, my eyes glaze over, and I mumble, “Mm-mm. Oh?? Sounds nice, dear.”  I have no idea what airleaf suspension or a day cab is, nor do I really care.  But I think the main reason I tune out once he starts talking trucks, or when I see the latest Truck Trader on his bedside table, is because the topic brings into unalterable focus the realization that my husband might be a redneck.  Did I marry a redneck?  For most former Cosmopolitan/Glamour editors, this is a question that is never pondered.  Yet I find myself asking it on a somewhat recurring basis.

Am I surprised?  No, not really. After all, we met at a rodeo. In Montana. I was writing a story about it. He was one of the competitors—a bullrider.  The guy has been horned in the face twice by a bull, and thought it was cool both times.  When he got kicked in the hand by a horse and broke a finger, he set the injury with a popsicle stick and an extra absorbent Maxipad.  He’s as tough as he is happy-go-lucky.  So while I am merrily hitched to one of the most dashing, risk-taking, manliest-of-men, hilarious, brilliant, and utterly unique human beings imaginable, there is a flip side to all that awesome-ness.  And the flip side is Truck Trader.