The churn over the Minnesota dentist who killed the lion reminded me of a young lady Buzzy and I met on our flight to New York from Johannesburg, South Africa. When we boarded the plane with only a dozen or so passengers on it, the lady was sitting by herself about mid-way down the aisle. As Buzzy and I were checking our tickets to locate our seats, she volunteered “You can sit anywhere.” Since she seemed pleasant enough, I sat in a seat in the same row as hers and we began talking. Make that she began talking and I began listening.
Turns out that she was returning from a two week safari in Botswana that she and her husband had booked as part of their honeymoon. The safari was something that she had always wanted to do. However, three days into the safari somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, her husband said to hell with it and left her as in left her there out in the boonies and left her marriage-wise saying he never wanted to marry her in the first place. (After I listened to her go on and on non-stop for a couple hours I better understood why the husband left her.)
She said that the safari honeymoon was her idea and that her husband was always lukewarm about it. She said that they had been having some “issues” prior to the wedding but that she didn’t think it was all that big a deal. (My guess is that the boyfriend/husband-to-be didn’t want to spend all that money on a honeymoon safari with someone he was having second thoughts about to begin with but he was unable to convince her otherwise.)
She said that after her husband bolted she continued on the safari figuring she might as well enjoy it while she could. However, she noted that being a single lady out in the wild, every night she had to repulse the safari guides and single guys on the safari from trying to get into her tent – literally and figuratively. She said after awhile she began to feel like she was the prey.
Now here is the kicker to this story and why the dental angle reminded me of all this: when I asked her how she and her husband first met, she said that he was a dentist and that she worked for him as a dental hygienist. They had only known each other for a couple of months when they started dating and then got engaged. She blamed the dentist’s mother for then orchestrating this huge wedding and things moving faster than they probably should have. She continued bad mouthing her ex and his mother by saying that he was a moma’s boy who couldn’t stand being away from his mother and that’s why he had to go back home so soon. When I asked her what she was going to do when she got back home she replied “Get a lawyer I guess.”
By this time in the flight, dinner had been served and the pilot announced that he was dimming the cabin lights for folks who wanted to do so to grab some shuteye. I wasn’t really that tired but I used that as my excuse to disengage from her and take a nap. She immediately began talking to the fella seated on her other side and as I dozed off, I heard her re-telling the same crazy story to him.
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| Location Of Cape Verde |
Midway thru our flight we landed for re-fueling in the Cape Verde islands located 300 some miles west of Africa. We were permitted to deplane and to go inside the terminal and browse around. Buzzy asked me about the young lady and wondered why I had stopped talking to her. I told him “Well, she’s a little crazy.” Buzzy said “That’s another reason to travel, you see that there are crazy people everywhere you go and not just where you are from”
Once in the terminal, Buzzy found some trinket that he wanted to buy but realized that he had left his wallet on board the plane. “You got any cash on you?” he asked me in what was a major role reversal for us because Buzzy always carried large amounts of cash on him while I usually only had a couple dollars on me. As I looked thru the 10 – 15 dollars or so that I had in my wallet, my safari lady strolled by us and without any hesitation nor
fanfare said “Here” and laid $20 on Buzzy.
Women with money always impressed Buzzy and this occssion was no different. As we paid for the item and made our way back to the plane Buzzy said “God damn, she whipped that $20 bill out like she knew what she was doing.” Seeing the lady walking a little ahead of us on the tarmac I called to her to let me grab a photo of her and Buzzy. Here it is:
I don’t for a moment believe that this lady’s ex husband is any way connected with the current Minnesota dentist who is in all of this controversy. However, if anyone sees any interviews with the Minnesota dentist’s first wife and she comes off as being a little kooky, let me know; I may be onto something here after all.