Introduction to the Cast

As the Tractor Wheel Turns is the title I've given to my relationship with my - now - husband, and his family...especially his ex-wife and children. You see my husband - I love him dearly - is a country boy. He grew up the oldest of 8 children - all boys - in Defuniak Springs, FL. Oh, and lest I be scolded for not portraying his life accurately, he grew up dirt poor. He likes to say that all they had to eat were beans and rice and when they got tired of that his Momma made rice and beans. I am - mostly - a city girl. I grew up as a military brat and moved every couple of years. After my dad retired from the Navy when I was about 10-years-old, we settled down in NC. I spent about 13 years growing up in and around rural Burlington, NC and even spent the first few years of my stint in NC on 21 acres out in the middle of nowhere. A 45-minute ride in the back of the truck into town on Saturday was considered a treat. This was before the days when people considered children riding in the back of truck a crime. My husband doesn't consider this time as having been sufficient enough to qualify me to speak on "all things country."

Walter - not his real name - and I met through the internet in 2004. It seems funny to write that now after reading the above paragraph but it's true - Walter is somewhat computer literate. That's much further along than most of his family except for his brother, Isaac, who is much more computer savy and actually does a bit of stock trading, etc. on the computer. After four years of long distance dating - a 3-hour drive - we finally got married this year. After six months of marriage, he is still doing the drive but that is an explanation you will have to wait to hear about later.

During the four years Walter and I dated, I regaled my girlfriends with tale after tale until one of them started coming to my office for the next installment of As The Tractor Wheel Turns, as she took to calling my relationship. She said our infrequent lunches just weren't long enough for me to tell about everything properly. So I have to give credit to her for coming up with the title. She has insisted I should write a book but I'm too lazy to write a whole book. I do like to write short snippets to amuse myself - and hopefully others - so I decided to start a blog. I mean blogging is the hip thing to do nowadays and I want desperately to be hip and on trend for once in my life.

So let me describe the main characters. I'm going to change the names here not to protect the innocent but to prevent large scale embarrassment at some of the things I'm about to write.

Robbin:
I'm using my real first name because I don't embarrass easily. I lost any shred of dignity I had remaining after giving birth when I was shown by a male nurse how to breastfeed. I'm a fat woman - fat is not a dirty word in my personal dictionary - and have correspondingly large breasts. Pregnancy made my breasts GIANORMOUS. So here is this male nurse at the hospital trying to show me how to breastfeed and having to literally pick up my boob with two hands to position it so my child - who was about the same size as said breast - could latch on. I would also like to mention that this male nurse also looked a great deal like Mel Gibson - the hot Mel Gibson before Mel became a crazy drunk. Besides that, I'm the writer and I will definitly be putting a skew on my version of events that most probably will not be as embarassing for me.

Walter:
I waited 10 years for Walter to come into my life. He doesn't have that much formal education - he did graduate from high school and even did a year of community college - but he is very intelligent. He can't solve a calculus problem but he can kick my butt playing chess. He is attentive and expresses his love for me in more than words - he shows me he loves me - but all is not a bed of roses so you can stop gagging over the trash can. Walter does irritate me as I'm sure I irritate him. He is very rarely on time - for anything. He also has the annoying habit of wanting to take a nap just when I think he should press on with whatever honey-do-job I have him working on. What's really annoying about it is that if I'm not around, he will actually go lay down and take a nap. Walter has also inherited a talking gene from his parents. For the most part, this is fine. He talks and I sort of listen while I continue to do other things. The talking gene has a mutation however that makes it impossible for him to remember everything he has said and therefore Walter has a tendency to repeat himself. I have heard some of the same stories several times now yet he never remembers having told them to me at all.

Betty:
Walter's ex-wife and the mother of his two children. Betty also grew up in Defuniak Springs, FL but came from a much more dysfunctional family. She was the only one of her family not to have been in trouble with the law until recently. She's now on probation for filing a false police report against her former landlord for theft. Betty did this in order to get revenge for the landlord pressing charges against Betty's husband for beating the landlord during a drinking binge. However, Betty still holds title to being the only one of her family not to have served actual time in jail - county or state. She proudly calls herself a "Redneck" and truly means it. She spent two years at a vocational school getting a certificate of completion for learning Microsoft Office and another certificate for Medical Transcription. She calls these certificates her degrees - and she's serious when she says this.

Chester:
Betty's current husband. Chester is a registered sex offender and an alcoholic. In answer to your question - because I asked the same one - yes, Betty knew he was a registered sex offender BEFORE she married him. She also knew Chester had an extensive history with law enforcement and that he had served time at the state level for various crimes. Chester is currently incarcerated for violation of his probation and battery on the landlord. He claims to be a mechanic but never seemed to have a decent running vehicle - not a good reference source when applying for a job as an actual mechanic. Betty says she is going to divorce Chester but is waiting for his mother to die to see if he will inherit anything worth taking in a divorce. Besides, where would Betty be able to park the travel trailer she lives in for free if it weren't for Chester's mother?

Walter Jr.:
Walter Jr. is Walter's oldest son. Having been born in the country, Walter Jr. has a nickname...Cooter. Cooter acquired the nickname from his behavior as a baby. He preferred to scoot on his butt instead of crawling. The word scoot morphed into coot when Cooter's younger brother couldn't pronounce the "s" in scoot. When Walter and Betty divorced, Cooter chose to live with his mother. When he was 15-years-old, he got his 17-year-old girlfriend pregnant. In Cooter's defense, however, I will have to say this girl MEANT to get pregnant. To her, pregnancy meant marriage and she was very focused on getting married to Cooter because that was how the women in her family got married. Thankfully, Betty wouldn't sign off on the marriage or Cooter would be living his own reality version of Deliverance right now. When he turned 16-years-old, Betty encouraged him to drop out of school because it's very important that a teenage father have absolutely no ability to support his offspring. The only time she ever went to the school he was zoned for was to sign the paperwork so he could quit. She had never actually registered him after they had moved for the upteenth time in a year. After two years of living with his mother, Cooter is now living with us. In January, he will begin attending a GED program and hopefully have his GED by the time he is 18-years-old.

Chris:
Chris is Walter's youngest son. Chris also has a nickname...Tank. He acquired his nickname from Cooter because Cooter said Chris's diaper stank. Cooter couldn't say the "s" in stank so it was shortened to tank. Tank is a "Daddy's boy" and is very protective of his father. Walter is also very protective of Tank. I think overly protective but that is my opinion. Chris is still quite young and I have hopes that I will be able to overcome some of the ignorance instilled in him by his mother. I call him Chris while everybody else calls him Tank. Having changed enough diapers raising my own son, I prefer not to be reminded of them when talking to my stepson.

Robbie:
Robbie is my son from my first marriage. He and Cooter are only 3 months apart in age with Robbie being the oldest. Robbie is my mother's revenge on me. Unfortunately, he acts just as badly as I did when I was his age. Fortunately, I already did everything he could ever think of doing and therefore catch him. He is a VERY bad liar. He had to have inherited this trait from his father because I could always tells when his father was lying. On the other hand when I was a teenager, I was a VERY good liar. I once got my mother to believe my eyes were red after coming home from a date because I had been crying over an argument I had with my date and not because I was actually stoned from smoking pot.

These are the immediate cast of characters. There are a myriad supporting cast but there are just so darn many of them so I will introduce them as I fill you in chaper by chapter on the soap opera that is my life. Cue voiceover - So stay tuned for the next episode of As The Tractor Wheel Turns...