Delete!

As I'm sitting here working on today's word quota, I can hear my mother asking my step-father a series of questions. She's filling out an online form for social security retirement, and she needs to know information about his past before he met and married her.

For the most part we do know everything about his past. He was married twice before he married my mother. He has three children, a few different jobs, and he's pretty much lived in the area his entire life. There isn't a whole lot to know, really. He's led a pretty normal life.

So, she gets to these questions about his previous marriages. The government wants to know about only those that lasted longer than ten years. His first one was right out of high school, and it didn't last very long at all. His second one lasted over 20 years. So, per the government's request, he had to give my mother the facts about that marriage. Mainly when it started and when it stopped.

My stepfather is horrible with dates. In fact, he keeps a card in his wallet with the birthdays of everybody (from his wife to his kids to himself) he thinks is important to know the birthdays of. So, my mother knew it was a long shot when she asked him the wedding date of his second wife, but she had no idea how much he'd deleted.

He couldn't even recall the month, or time of year this wedding took place. He had to pull out his card of birthdates and estimate based on when his second child was born. So then my mother asked him when it was he married HER. No shit... he pulled off his wedding ring and looked at the inscribed date to tell her April 5, 1997. He just has a shitty memory when it comes to dates.

Today I learned it is completely possible to delete information about what is supposed to be the best day of your life.