Hello, there; allow me to introduce myself. My name is Stan Watson, actor, playwright and raconteur; I'm writing this letter to clear the air about my first wife and the son I was told never missed me at all after I was out of the picture. When I first met Elly Richards damned near forty years ago, she seemed like the answer to all my romantic problems. She said she shared my interests in theatre, wouldn't mind holding down the fort when and if the company I was part of at the time went on tour and, above all, agreed that we were both far too immature as people to think about bringing children into the world. I really should have known better than to believe all that; my first warning was her friendship with a Connie Poirier. El sort of tapdanced around what her buddy was doing but it was obvious that the woman saw nothing wrong with lying about who she was to get a husband; since she blamed the men for the collapse of her needy twerp pal's romances, it should have been obvious that she felt that it was a good thing to do.
In my defense, it's sort of easy to be had by her; after all, you wouldn't expect anyone that baffled-looking of deceit and manipulation. I learned that that was not the case in the Summer of 1975; I'll never forget that day if I live to be a million. Y'see, I'd been offered the lead in a nation-wide tour of "Riel: the musical" but had to turn it down 'cause she comes in in her Mickey D suit and says she has no idea how she wound up pregnant. Realizing that I'd been played, I spent most of the next year getting the lying little witch out of my life and away from my earnings; I pretty much ended up handing her sole custody of Michael, who's the reason I'm writing this, just to keep her from blackening my name with her crazy accusations that I was cheating on her with every female life form in the Northern Hemisphere. I'd get an update every six months telling me that Mike didn't miss me at all so it would be no good contacting him which is why I told him to not contact me a few months back. His wife Deanna told me that Elly had lied again; the reason that he didn't miss me is that Elly broke her promise to tell him about me before he hit twenty. I shouldn't have been surprised; it's just like her to let him think he's related to that dreary, train-obsessed failure of a dentist she married.
I met Patterson once when he, El and their daughters were driving to pick up her dad, who I kinda like, to have him live with them. What I saw was a small-time, small-minded twit from a small town who thought small and used small words. It was obvious that he couldn't defend Mike or his children from being warped due to Elly's making everything about her so that was another good reason to keep that part of my past in the past. I'd already been burned by one Elly, I didn't need another one throwing his weight around, disrespecting Anna (the second and last "Mrs Watson"), Gwen and Lynda (our children) and bellowing about how the world owed him a living. What changed is that he too saw through his mother. It seems that Elly had taken a permanent vacation from the reality she couldn't bear last September; according to Mike, the 'official' trigger was something about how Liz's (the older of John and Elly's two daughters) honeymoon had ended early 'cause the husband didn't realize that he wasn't the first man she'd slept with or some such nonsense. He'd insinuated that she'd been slowly going crazy for years but nobody took the time to notice, though. He's been spending the last year trying to contain her, get Patterson to see that she needed help and getting his family the Hell away from the horrible little suburb he grew up in and help his wife deal with some unpleasantness she went through. He's trying to figure out whether growing up in what turned out to be a nuclear testing site was responsible for her problems or was it something else; I told him about Gloria and Randy (my kid sister and Down's syndrome nephew), compared notes about the miscarriages in his wife's family as well as the tendency towards deafness that plagues the Watsons as well as the checkered medical history of his girlfriends. He hasn't come to conclusion about all that but he does seem to realize that a vasectomy is a good idea at this point in his life. I mean, I had one after the twins were born and I don't regret it a bit.
In any event, I'm glad our first (and probably last) meeting helped give you a bit of perspective on things. I'll have to wrap up because I'm the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in the Bauhaus version of A Christmas Carol we're doing; it wouldn't be to Elly's taste but the reviews are mostly good. The exception is some blogger who wonders when I tell Scrooge and the Cratchits that this is the part where we dance. After that, dinner with my family; this time, though, we've got more people to wish well. This includes you on Mike's mailing list so Happy Holidays from me.
Yours,
Stan Watson.