The reason I am broke.

Teeth...this is the reason.

Before I married, I made a list of requirements that my soon to be bride needed to have as qualifications. These qualifications would help me in my personal quest to be wealthy.

I figured if I were wealthy I would be able to do great philanthropies for the poor and needy especially if I was the one in the need catagory. I would be good with my money and I would be fair and just and wise...I could have made a lot of people happy if I were wealthy. I know for a fact relatives would appear more willing to give me the white meat at holiday dinners.

A wife could free me up from the mundane issues that tap a fellow and bleed them dry of personality and wit, like working for someone else does. My wife's job would be the ticket towards me getting the college degree of power, the time to tinker and create the perfect invention just waiting to be patented and sold, and the guarantee of stress relief by allowing me to sleep should my nerves need a break.

This my wife could do if she had a great job, one that she could work at her leisure of course. One which she would make a lot of money for minimal hours. A Dental Hygienist seemed to be a perfect fit. That job pays great money for short hours. Yup a Dental Hygienist is what I needed.

Next it would be good if her Father was a dentist or Oral surgeon or Orthodontist. I come from a family of bad teeth genes and those genes skipped a couple of essential front teeth in me and all my blood siblings. I was known as the "smartie kid" in school. No I was the "smart kid", the smartie kid was the guy that could put 5 candy smarties between each of my 4 top front teeth, the spaces were so big. When ever pictures for the class year book came due, I would pop in 5 white smarties and smile wide, from 20 feet I looked normal.

The last qualification was that my wife needed to be cute. Cute is so much more important than the other appearance categories. I'll explain; there are 5 categories, Cute, Pretty, Beautiful, Common and Ugly. Pretty won't get dirty, that won't work. I mean that. Pretty doesn't work, they file nails while the phone rings at their job. Beautiful they cheat on you, divorce you and then take all your money, beside the often have bad breath, but nobody ever tells them cause they are just to beautiful. Common gets fat...once fat you will find as a mate you are saving your money for a new Lazy boy recliner instead of a vacation. Then there is Ugly. This is self explanatory. Ugly fits for so many bad decisions in a marraige; drunkenness, low self esteem, anger issues, gender confusion and so forth. It is amazing how many Ugly Beautiful, Ugly Pretty and Ugly Common people there are, but you never see a Ugly Cute person, they are just too Cute to be ugly. Oh and I should also mention there are Ugly Ugly people.

My plan didn't work out. My wife looked like a good candidate, she was studying to be a Dental Hygenist when we were first married and she was Cute. Unfortunately her Dad was not in the Oral business. He did sell toothpaste and other oral sundries, but that was because he was a Drug Store Manager. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

As I said I am broke. My wife decided after working as a Dental Assistant that Dentists are creeps (at least the ones she worked for) and she hated being inside other peoples smelly mouths. So she decided to have babies instead. We will cover this in a moment and how it plays into the broke status. As I mentioned before she was Cute. So darn Cute that she was able to lull me out of my required qualifications. It is really hard to argue with cute people, it's like arguing with a kitty or a bunny. They listen for a while, flash some cuteness and scamper away.

Now it is 26 years later. The babies come into the picture here. Remember the bad oral genes, well they got'em. Just like me they needed dental work, braces, cavity repairs, TMJ repairs, wisdom extraction. (That's when they pull wisdom teeth, the wisdom goes with the teeth. I had one kid that had 8 wisdom teeth, she's got none now.) And then there is me. I have spent as much on my mouth as I would have on a fine restored Ford Mustang, and my mouth doesn't like near as nice as one of those.

Oh sometimes I rue the day I met Cute, for that is the day I embarked on broke.