"Sam! Its Fred! You're not going to believe this I know. Janette has left me!

"I know! I can't understand it myself. Whatever happened to 'talking it out', or whatever it was she used to say? All the time she was on about 'talk to me, talk to me, talk to me'. Drove me nuts. Now not a word from her. I tried as much as any husband ever could, I know it.

"When did she leave? I'm not sure. Whadda ya mean, whadda I mean I'm not sure? I'm just not, that's all. After work yesterday I stopped at Flannigan's as usual. I had a few beers, shot some pool, ate a couple of orders of wings and watched the football game for a while. I came home at half-time, grabbed the beer in the refrigerator and watched the rest of the game in my recliner. I must have dozed off. I woke up sometime during the night and went to bed.

"I got up this morning and went to have breakfast. I sat down at the table and waited. And waited. No coffee there and no breakfast. After a while I got impatient and yelled for Janette. I mean. heaven knows I was patient enough. She knows better. She is supposed to have everything ready for me before she goes to work.

"Well I sat there and sat there. I yelled some more. What? No, I don't mean YELL at her, not the way you seem to be implying. Not loud anyway. I keep my temper. Sure, there was that time when I asked her to get my creel and she slipped off that rotten log and fell into the river. That was something to yell about. She disturbed the water so bad I didn't get a decent cast for the rest of the day. And to top it off she lost my creel while she was swimming to shore. Course it did look mighty funny watching her splash around screaming that she was drowning. I did appreciate you going in after her as she went down for the third time. I would have but I thought I had a bite. Turned out to be a damn snag. Now THERE was a disappointment.

"So she never showed up. I finally walked around the house and couldn't find her. Her car is gone and I looked in the bathroom. Why there? Shows you how much YOU know about women. I was checking to see if all of her doodads and makeup and such things were still cluttering her part of the bathroom. They weren't. I looked for her clothes. They're all gone too.

"A note? I never thought of that. Hold on, let me look.

"By golly, you were right Sam! It was on our bed. I must not have seen it last night. It was on her side, that's why. A lot of times she doesn't sleep there but in the other room. I dunno, something about beer breath all the time and snoring. As if I snore. Well, not enough to bother anyone. What do you mean, rattling the windows three doors down?

"What does the note say? Oh I forgot about that. Give me a moment...

"Oh, all its says is 'Had enough, I'm gone. You know why.'

"What does she mean? I don't know why. I don't have any idea. Wasn't I always a good husband? Didn't I always tell her when she was gaining weight? Make those cute 'porky, porky' sounds for her whenever it was needed? Didn't I always answer truthfully when she asked if some outfit made her look fat? Or when she thought about working out at the gym and I told her there wasn't any point in it, women her age should just accept that they're too old for that stuff.