Intolerable Defects

SKYE BLUE

People, can you tell me why all the good, warm and fuzzy emotions you feel from the moment you realize you like someone seem to fade away so quickly? Why is it we can’t hang on to those good feelings for the duration of our relationships? How is it that try as we might to avoid them the ‘blahs’ always seem to find their way into an otherwise perfectly good romantic connection? As we all know, those blahs are some powerful shit. They can transform your partner’s cutest quirks into intolerable defects in just a few short months.

So there P and I were sitting huddled next to each other at one of the back tables at the Catch 23 Comedy Improv night that happens every Friday, at the Comedy Bar here in Toronto. Our very own Enthusiastic Amateur, Leesa Gaspari was on stage with one of her partners in crime, working the audience with her acerbic wit, when P caught a serious case of the giggles – which wouldn’t have been a problem (after all we were at a comedy club and a little laughter is expected) if not for the fact that P laughed like a school girl – a very small school girl.

Now when P and I first met, just over six months prior to that fateful night at Catch 23, I had noticed that despite the fact that he was a 5’11” brick shit house of a man, he had a laugh that could only describe as a high-pitched and screechy giggle (I kid you not folks).  Despite this I gave him my number (a moment that I found myself wishing I could do over more than a few times as our relationship fell apart). Ever the optimist, during the early days of our romance I convinced myself that it was an endearing and cute trait, for an otherwise near perfect (i.e. smart, hot, sweet and funny) man to have.

Well, on our night out at the comedy bar, P’s laugh was getting on my last nerve – as in pushing me to the brink, people. And trust me, it didn’t help matters when I saw the looks of shock and then pity register on the faces of the people sitting in front of us, when they turned (away from the action on the stage I might add) to see who the loud elfin laughter was emanating from. Each time he laughed I was tempted to cover my ears and make a run for it – the sound of it was that grating. But instead like the dutiful girlfriend I was I sat there, with my gaze fixed on the stage and wishing I was anywhere else in the world but there with P, the Girly Giggler.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised when I tell you that P and I broke up soon after that night.  After being rankled by his grating laughter things just weren’t the same for me. We kept in contact for a while after our break up, but we eventually lost track of each other.  That said, to this day every time I hear a little girl giggle, I think of P.

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