It started in Portugal.
We were at a restaurant in Lisbon on our third or fifth round of cocktails. The mood was merry. The hour was late. Our table was loud and getting louder. It was one of those nights - one of the great ones. And we knew it at the time.
It was the night that the Four Fucking Stick Figures came into being.
The “we” in this adventure was Marie and me, Stella and her husband Reggie. We’re about as close as two couples can get without swinging. There are pictures of us in their home, and vice versa. We live a mile apart in Chicago, and we travel everywhere together - more than a dozen cities in six countries over three years. If Marie ever went 48 consecutive hours without speaking to Stella, she might get a rash on her neck. Reggie and I are close too. I have a giant, monogrammed beer stein on my living room mantle with an ‘H’ on it. Next to it is an identical stein with an ‘R’.
The Portuguese waiter brought another round.
“Hank, you should make a fucking website,” Stella suggested, drawing a rectangle in the air with both of her index fingers. “You should make a website, and we should have an ongoing cartoon like Dilbert to tell of our adventures together.”
“Can any of us draw?” I asked.
“I can,” Marie offered, laughing.
“You can?” I asked my then-fiancée. I had never seen her draw.
She looked at several glasses filled with various alcohols in front of her. She chose one and drank. Then she continued, “I can draw stick figures.”
“Yes! Perfect. That’s all we need,” Stella said. “I can write the captions.”
“How would we tell them apart?” I asked.
“I’ll have long hair,” Stella explained. “Marie will have long hair and glasses. Reggie will have a beard . . .”
“And Hank will have a giant head,” offered Reggie, helpfully. (And yes, it’s true. My hat size is not always available in sporting good stores).
“Yes!! That’s it. Four fucking stick figures!”
And that was the beginning of a stupid, juvenile, but still running joke - three years and counting. I never created the website, and a cartoon has yet to be drawn. I’m not sure why the idea endures. There’s just something magical about the simplicity and needless profanity between middle-aged professionals. It works as a headline. Instead of an actual cartoon, it has morphed into an expression, usually via text.
What we’re doing: Four fucking stick figures go truffle hunting.
A plot at a boring event: Four fucking stick figures leave early and go to a bar?
How we’re feeling: Four fucking stick figures shouldn’t have drank so much last night.
It works as a proposal: Two fucking stick figures drink beer and smoke cigars while two fucking stick figures shop?
A counter-proposal: No. Two fucking stick figures come shopping with other two fucking stick figures.
An unwarranted attack: One fucking stick figure has a head that doesn’t match his body.
A warranted attack: Blow me, Reginald.
If you met Reggie for the first time, you might think that he’s a bit of a prick with an odd sense of humor. If you met him twice, you’d be certain of it.
Reggie went prematurely grey in his early forties. Today, at 50, he has white hair and a white mane of a beard. If you put him in a red hat and a red coat, he could pass for Santa, but only if Santa was perpetually unimpressed by everything and everyone.
Since I’ve never mentioned him before, here’s an example.
A few years ago, Marie was trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And if you’re not familiar with the running world, the Boston Marathon is a very big deal. You can’t just sign up for it. You have to finish another marathon in less than four hours to qualify.
Marie had already run seven marathons just for fun. (Yeah, I don’t get it either). But she signed up for the Toronto marathon to qualify for Boston. She hired a running coach. She trained for a year. In order to qualify for her age group, Marie needed to run 26.2 miles in less than three hours and 38 minutes. Lucy, Stella, Reggie and I flew to Toronto to support her attempt.
Marie ran the marathon in three hours and 26 minutes. She beat her previous best by nearly half an hour. She qualified for Boston. She actually took fifth place among her age group in the Toronto marathon. We greeted her at the finish line to celebrate her amazing achievement. And what was the first thing Reggie said to Marie?
“Yeah, I was hoping you’d finish fourth.”
And that’s him in a nutshell. He’s not gloomy, nor is he a pessimist. He just sees it as his sworn duty to take everyone down a peg whenever there’s an opportunity.
To put a fine point on it, Reggie is going to read this entry. He’s probably grinning as he reads this line, but he’ll never admit it. He won’t even admit he’s aware of my blog. Instead, in a week or so, the next time I see him, he’ll ask, “Hey, aren’t you keeping an online dream journal or something? Sounds gay.”
On the paternity front, there’s no real update this week. We’re waiting to hear back about our genetics tests, so I decided to introduce a new facet to the story and two of what are certain to be recurring characters.
This isn’t just “Hank’s Road to Fatherhood”. It’s also “Four Fucking Stick Figures and a baby.”
Way too creative...imaginative...
I believe I've seen those "stick figures" at The Louvre, The Prado and most conspicuously The State Hermitage and The State Russian Museum... I'll be watching/reading YOU!!! AND "MARIE..."