Is It Hard Having an Incredibly Ugly Wife?

The Nimbostratus are high in the sky today. Aren’t they?

When I moved to Illinois in 2019, the first thing my new neighbor told me was that he had “an incredibly ugly wife.” I thought I had misheard him and did what I did best, ignoring what he had said and replying with some comment about the weather.

The following week, I knocked on his door to invite him and his wife to my housewarming party — it’s the neighborly thing to do when you move into a new place.

“I’ll be happy to join, but can I bring my ugly wife? I prefer to warn you. She’s incredibly ugly, and some people are disturbed by her.”

I replied that they were both invited, of course. Even the kids, if they had some. I didn’t add anything about the kids’ potential looks because that wouldn’t have been appropriate, and I said something about the weather instead because I was uncomfortable.

When my neighbor arrived at the party, I got confused and started rambling about the weather without saying as much as hello. His wife was stunning.

Wait.

Stunning. It simply wasn’t the word.

She was Athena reborn.

Imagine Grace Kelly in the movie High Society (1956), multiply that by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), add Halle Berry in Die Another Day (2002), and you get an idea of how beautiful my neighbor’s wife was that day (and any other day I saw her after).

The situation didn’t make sense to my neurons, and all I could think of was that the anticyclonic winds have high pressure and blow counter-clockwise when it’s raining under the tropics — which made even less sense.

My wife — she’s beautiful to me, which is the most important — arrived and saved us from an awkward situation by inviting them inside and offering homemade non-alcoholic cocktails based on a mix of cranberry and green lime.

Maybe the cranberry gave me courage. Maybe the green lime made me bold.

Who knows?

But when I saw an opportunity, I took my neighbor to the side and asked him if it was hard to have an incredibly ugly wife.

“Aha! You agree! Many people don’t see what I see and tell me she’s Athena reborn. They do complex equations with movie stars I never understood and conclude my wife is even more beautiful. But you see the truth like I do. It’s such a relief.”

At that point, I successfully kept my mouth shut and didn’t say anything, not even about the weather, even though the cumulonimbus in the sky would have deserved a mention.

My neighbor drank up his cocktail and explained it was tough to have an incredibly ugly wife. “I go to bed, close my eyes, and remember how much I love her. But in the morning, I wake up, and it’s tough. I’m in shock and can only talk about the weather. I noticed you did the same, by the way. I wasn’t surprised.”

For more ugly wife adventures, check out the series:

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