The Jester’s Quart: D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Columnist Greg Wyshynski has learned a lot about divorce this week, and he compares the split between the Philadelphia Eagles and Terrell Owens to the demise of his own marriage in the latest ‘JQ.’

Greg Wyshynski
Columnist, SportsFanMagazine.com

There were two significant divorces finalized this week: that of the Philadelphia Eagles and Terrell Owens, and that of Mr. and Mrs. Greg Wyshynski.

I have a feeling mine was the more congenial split. Hell, it was a laugh-riot. It’s amazing how much gallows humor can spring forth in the lobby of a judicial center when there’s enough coffee and anxiety in your system.

In Maryland, you have to wait a full year to get a no-fault divorce — meaning you live in separate dwellings; you never cohabitate, even for a night; and you never kill a bottle of Cuervo, stumble back to her place and take the log to the mill. There was never a danger of any of those conditions being met by myself and the Ex over the last 365, mainly because one of us would have smashed the bottle before it was finished and tried to assault the other with a jagged glass weapon.

So much changes in a year. I’m in love with someone else, someone with whom I truly feel I was meant to be. She’s finally living the life she wants to live, without the restraints of domesticity binding her. We’re both reasonably happy people, and that can be attributed to the painful decision over a year ago to end our nearly 4-year partnership.

My ex-wife and I finalized things this week, and it was easy. We didn’t have any kids together, we didn’t have any shared assets, and we didn’t even have a joint bank account. Which, looking back on it all, should have told you something about how “committed” we were to this venture, I suppose.

Our divorce was a learning experience. Sometimes, for example, these things don’t happen in a courtroom, but in a room the size of dentist’s office, minus that giant adjustable light that looks like the metal snake probe from “War of the Worlds.” And sometimes you’re forced to wait an extra 30 minutes to get into that room because the people before you need to find a court-appointed interpreter to continue their proceedings. (I mean, c’mon, we’re in a judicial center located in the suburbs of Washington, DC; what’s the delay here? Do these people speak Klingon?)

A bit of advice I’d like to pass along to any of you who might one day find yourselves in a divorce hearing: never have a law student as a witness. The judge asked me and my ex-wife, under oath, what date we split up. We both gave the same date, which was also the date we supplied on our written documents. Then she asks Lawyer Boy, my witness, the same thing, and all of sudden he’s some hood on “Law and Order,” shaking in his shoes about perjury. “Well, I, uh, this is the first time I heard an actual date, uh, I can only, uh, speak to the fact that, uh, it was sometime last year.”

Judge: “In the fall?”

“Again, uh, I can’t speak to the fact that it was on or off an actual date, for I don’t have the evidentiary relevance on my person, but, uh, I can confirm that I believe it might have been in the fall, yes, potentially in the fall.”

Jesus…put a guy under oath, and all of a sudden he turns into Hugh Grant after getting caught with that hooker.

But, after about 10 minutes of verification and a judge asking you if you “really, really, really want to get a divorce,” everything’s over and everyone goes home happy, though somewhat empty inside — just like after an NHL shootout.

I couldn’t help but think of my own predicament as I watched the Philadelphia Eagles cut ties with T.O. over the last week.

There was that early courtship, thinking that a certain someone can complete you. Sometimes you have to fight for the one you love; and sometimes you have to wait until it becomes apparent that an independent arbitrator isn’t going to send them to the Baltimore Ravens before you can complete a trade.

Then comes that cute time before the actual wedding. You use pet names, like “T.O.” You start a collection of mementos, like stuffed animals, pictures of each other in exotic locales (like Jacksonville), and black No. 81 jerseys that you can’t go two blocks in Philly without seeing some dude wearing. In the bitter end, all of this stuff either ends up in a box in the back of the closet or in a dumpster behind the supermarket.

The wedding arrives, and the two of you enter into a solemn bond of legality and emotional commitment — a contract, if you will. The only difference being that in T.O. World, contracts are made to be renegotiated. (Come to think of it, my ex-wife did some revisions of her own on our vows, too…)

The relationship has its ups, but it’s mostly downs. Baggage that you tried to ignore, and hoped your partnership could overcome, continues to weigh you down. Maybe you thought that bit with the pom-poms and the Sharpie was good-natured fun instead of a pathetic cry for attention from a seriously psychologically damaged individual. Maybe you thought that sort of immaturity wouldn’t have a chance to flourish when there’s so much time being spent building towards a bigger picture — whether it’s a stable family or a Super Bowl ring.

You try to make the relationship work, even though you know it’s causing more distraction and pain and frustration than a successful one should. The most important people in your life don’t like the person you’re with. You’re spending more time on their antics and obsessions than on your own goals. You’re a blue-collar team; he’s showboating egomaniacal malcontent, the kind of locker room cancer that eventually ends up on Al Davis’s payroll in the waning years of his career.

Finally, it comes to a head, and the bond breaks. You both say things to hurt the other — out of anger, out of desperation, out of ego. If only Drew Rosenhaus had been there to simply say “next question” every time there was another explosion of antagonism.

Maybe they come back with a mea culpa, an apology so sweeping in its scope that it resembles Chunk’s tear-filled confessions about fake vomit to Mama Fratelli in “The Goonies.” It’s a last ditch effort for reconciliation, the sort of panicky delirium that comes when one realizes their own actions have cost them their solidity.

It may crack old doors for a moment, but it will never reopen them. In the end, both divorces finish the same way: with the principals moving on, allowing old wounds to heal and striving to find whatever it was they couldn’t find in each other.

The only difference being that if my ex-wife and I are 6-6 after the next four games, we’re not going to patch things up.

I can’t say the same thing for the Eagles and T.O.

-SFM-

Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Senior Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book “Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History” will be published in Spring 2006. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail. com.

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