Here is my theory on parents. Well, male parents, after their respective spouses pass away or divorce them. This theory has evolved from watching first hand, as elderly men said good bye to a wife of more than 40 years and wound up in the sack with some other woman just a few weeks later. Two weeks in the case of my father-in-law, with some bimbo he picked up in a Tampa bar. Within six weeks another one had pretended she was pregnant and extorted several thousand dollars from him before one of his kids had a P.I. tail the woman to find out she was lying. Damn. He had actually been proud to think his old sperm was still swimming.
Not only do these men pick up on their teenage sex life without skipping a beat, courtesy of Viagra, but somehow, their complete memory of their grown children and their grandchildren was also erased like a sci fi movie of the week. We have witnessed this phenomenon in my husband's family, as well as in many others of our friends when their formerly loving fathers were replaced by paranoid and angry strangers who now had female "handlers" making all their decisiosn for them.
Some people say, "Good for him! He should have love again in his life." Agreed. No one should be denied. No one should be forced to live without romantic love, but we are not talking about love here today. We're talking about good old horn dog random sex hookups of the geriatric kind that lead to the total destruction of what was once, a family.
So here is the theory; women secrete a vaginal chemical and when it comes into contact with a male penis, has the ability to affect the hippocampus of the male brain. That would be the area of the brain that stores memory. Even after one encounter with this vaginal memory neutralizer, an otherwise loving man will "forget" to call his granddaughter on her birthday.
With repeated applications, this said same grandfather with no longer recall that he has any grandchildren or for that matter grown children at all. After several months he will become unreachable by telephone and unavailable for all holiday gatherings. Pictures will be removed from the walls of his home as the female memory vaporizer begins to spend more and more time at the mans home. In our own case, the woman convinced him to have an auction company go through his house and sell everything of value. She sold her own home and all it's contents to her daughter for $10. so it was protected from combining with his assets. She then announced to his sons that they had to pick up their things by Saturday or they would be discarded. Her call came on Wednesdayto kids who lived in Florida. After a few months of the woman stealthily moving one item a day into his home, she will be virtually moved in with him and the race begins for the wedding ring.
Now, if she is clever (or diabolical as in the case of my own step-mother-in-law), she will erase phone messages and throw away cards and letters that arrive from his family and then "comfort him" after he spends a silent birthday while his "ungrateful children" completely ignore him.
If she is a master manipulator, she will even stage a drama for him as happened one summer weekend in Fennimore, Wisconsin. The step mother in law had called her new husbands four sons and said that he wanted them all to come for a visit and he wanted to have a discussion about his estate with them in person and please bring the children so he could see them all. After confused calls back and forth between brothers, it was decided that we all would attend and give each other moral support in the presence of Attila, the step mother.
On the day we were to meet at the house, all four families arrived after flying or driving from other states and cities. We all pulled into the driveway and when no one came out to greet us, one brother walked up and rang the doorbell. Attila opened the door and with mock surprise on her face said, "What are you all doing here?" A coup to be certain. She had been unable to convince her new husband that his children were greedy vultures so this new plan lured every one of us to his door, and of course, when the boys took their father aside to tell them that Attila had invited them there saying it had been his request as he wanted to talk about his estate, he went into a rage. Right on cue. Well done, queen of evil. This couldn't have been written better by Tennessee Williams.
To make a very long story short, by the end of my father-in-laws life, Attila had convinced him that he had Alzheimer's and "helped" him by serving cocktails to wash down the medication that her country doctor had prescribed, and she had enlisted the help of the oldest step son, a CPA, who assisted in re-writing the will to exclude children. Even at the funeral in the tiny farm town, this woman announced to his sons that there would be no after funeral gathering so they could leave. It was months later when a school friend of one of his sons called to say how awful he had felt when the entire town showed up at the meal and gathering Atilla and the step son had planned and none of the deceaseds sons were in attendance. It took awhile for the town to figure out that Attila had dis-invited them.
There are sob stories all over written by step mothers whose husbands children are described as "ungrateful brats" and "greedy". Perhaps these same women need to take a look at the fact that men, when they lose their spouses to death or divorce, are incapable of living on their own. These men have been taken care of their entire lives and they don't want to learn to sort laundry now. Who needs to hire a maid or a comfort woman who will do his wash, cook for him and lie down when he's horny when there are so many elderly women waiting to jump at the chance to do that for financial security in their last years?
Surely there are step mothers out there who have the decency to honor their new husband's original families. That means not only in their actions and attitudes towards the people who were in his life long before she was, but in honoring the legacy and promises made from parent to child over a lifetime. And that's not just the promises like Mom and I are leaving the cottage to you kids, it's the promises like I'll be there at Ryan's
graduation and I'll be there if you need some advice or a golf partner. Those are the times that are truly lost and the opportunity for a grandchild to know their grandfather is irreplaceable. My children were young when Attila entered his life. They have virtually no memory of the man except for a few photos and a bad taste in their mouth at the way what was a family became nothing more than a bunch of tense strangers.
Take the time before you re-marry to spend at least a day with each and every one of your family members. Look them in the eye and get to know them. Take pictures of your time together and never lose them. And ask yourself if you are prepared to lose all of them for the chance at a laundress and a roll in the hay. Tell this woman that she will in no way be allowed to interfere with your family and your relationship with them. And if she agrees that it is vital to keep a loving and healthy relationship with your family as well as the one she may have, then one word to you men who are out there aloneagain: PRE-NUP. If she won't sign it, run away.
As for Attila, well, after all was said and done, she had cremated dad's body before the boys could get an autopsy done to confirm the Alzheimer's diagnosis, and even though Dad had left instructions that he wanted to be buried in his WWII Navy Uniform. She and the CPA stepson took everything of value and she lived in the house in Bradenton that was supposed to be left to the boys. I suppose she's storing up more of the memory erasing vagina juice and she's hunting down another unsuspecting financial victim somewhere on the beaches on Florida right now.