Chapter 1

I married out of my class, I know that. I’m average in everything except brains. Average height and weight, brown hair and eyes, the sort of man that Hollywood uses as an extra. You know what I mean, the guy in the restaurant who is sitting at the table behind the show’s stars and is pretending to talk to the equally average woman across from him.

My wife Barb on the other hand was just a point or two short of beautiful; she was an eight or a nine. She was, and probable still is, the sort of woman that men take a second look at when she enters a room, and she knows it.

We knew each other in high school but moved in different circles. She was one of the in crowd, and for four years I was a ghost. You know, one of those kids who were never noticed.

Since my cheating mother, and dad’s cheating second wife, both took him to the cleaners and raped him financially, he was lucky to just hold on to the farm that had been in his family for over 100 years. As a result, he and Betty, his third wife, (he finally got it right, and as far as I was concerned, Betty was my mom) explained to me that they were just getting out of debt so there was no money for college.

“No problem folks, I said, “I expected this, and the navy, thanks to my grades and the testing they gave me, have offered me a place in an electronics class dealing with some very high level stuff that will put me in the brig if I describe it. After my hitch I’ll have the money to get the electronic engineering degree that I want.”