Chapter 2: Confusion

All this hem hawing around had me totally confused and it didn’t get any better. Up until two days ago I just didn’t know what she was going on about but when I came home Wednesday night after supper and the kids went to bed I found out was this was all leading up to. Gloria wanted to experience life without me. But just on a very temporary basis, like every other Friday night she would go out with a different guy to see what different experiences she could find.

I talked to her like she was a child and explained that what she wanted amounted to cheating. But her response was that it was not cheating if I knew about what she was doing. She even had the nerve to say that I could even chaperone her on her quest for experience as long as I didn’t interfere with her and her guy of the week. She said that this was just something she had to do to be a full rounded woman and it would not affect me or the kids. She loved all of us but she had to do this to keep her sanity.

Well, I was completely stunned, or as the English say I was gobsmacked. Did this woman have her head on straight or what? I finally found my voice and tried to explain that her with another man or woman constituted cheating, no matter if I knew about it or not, it was still cheating. But she insisted that if I knew about then it was not cheating because she was not doing it behind my back and not telling me about anything. I was to know all about it. She said she would come home shower and douche herself and then come to bed all horny for me. I just couldn’t believe the words out of her mouth, a 39 year old woman that I had known for 17 years and had 3 children with was spouting this nonsense to me and still saying that she loved me and the children like there was no tomorrow.

I told her to let me catch up and thought for a few moments and said my famous phrase, “You will go out any Friday night to whore around OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!”

She said, “Okay then that’s settled,” and she rolled over in bed and went to sleep.

Meanwhile I was awake most of the night trying to figure out this woman that had replaced my wife of almost 17 years. Was she being possessed by some being that had to have sex with multiple people to survive or was she just off the rails and ready for the loony bin? I worried most of the night and I was useless the next day when an idea hit me that was brilliant.

Six months ago, we discovered, by accident, a new kind of gelatin that had properties that was almost impenetrable once solidified, but the other thing was that if you made a sheet of this gelatin a quarter inch thick and a 12 inch by 12 inch sheet that when penetrated it spread the force over the entire sheet. That’s not the most impressive of the discoveries. Another section under me was working on a material that would shed water and spills of all kinds but displacing the molecules of the offending liquid or stain over most of the fabric. We found that adding tiny copper wires within the fabric that contact with the wearer’s bare skin it was even better, because it was taking small electrical signals from the skin and almost electrifying the fabric to resist the unwanted material.

I came up with the bright idea after a brainstorming session with my whole team what the two products could be used for. I said laughingly that it might make a good bullet proof vest. The two discoverer’s at fist laughed it off as a joke to lighten up the session, but as we all thought of it, it became a real possibility. So, we pursued it and came up with a 1 ½ pound bullet proof vest utilizing 3 sheets of fabric and two sheets of the gel between the fabric. Total weight for front, side, and back came to 3pounds - 4 ounces. Plus, the coverage was a little better than the standard police or military vest as it could come up higher in the chest and back area and was more flexible than the standard Kevlar woven vest.

We had done final testing on the vest and had 125 vests made up that we were about to get endorsements from local police, the DPS, and the Texas Rangers. I talked to my boss and explained my problem at home and he readily made a vest available to me for Thursday and Friday in case my wife took it into her head to just kill me anyway.