The name says it all: “Letters I Wish I’d Mailed to the Man Who Divorced Me to Marry a Waitress” by Andrea L. Emmons. The title—lengthy, yet catchy—said it all. Sometimes, you really can judge a book by its cover. She was disgruntled about the divorce, and petty in her choice to identify the other woman as a waitress. I gave her the benefit of a doubt, then regretted the decision, but from the lesson I learned, I’m glad I read it.
Despite the changes of names and places, I knew this semi-autobiographical tale was set in a town near me. I was initially excited to think that I could have bumped into her at some point, but she was so pitiful that I lost that fascination and I kept reading just to finish the damned thing. I initially began to write down details and to look her up on the internet—just for a picture. But her co-dependency was so pathetic that I no longer cared to put in the effort and started to side with the slime-ball husband.
The book took place over a 3 year span in the 70s with the other woman about the same age as the author. Doing a little math, you can figure that to be 35 in 1974, the other woman would have been 18 in 1957. At that time, not nearly as many women attended college, but for those who did, the prevailing thought was not to get an education to get a great job—it’s all about the Mrs. Degree. If you don’t know much about what the workplace was like for women in that time period, watch Mad Men. This was also not the time in which people normally returned to school at a later age.
The author was extremely proud of her career. She was a high school teacher. She wrote of herself as being infinitely superior to the other woman, constantly belittling her for being a lowly waitress. She even forbade her son to date a waitress. When she ate at a restaurant, she refused to leave a tip on the principle that she felt ALL waitresses are evil husband-stealing sluts.
The book was published by what is called a vanity press. Before the internet, any idiot who wanted to get their message out and couldn’t get a book deal would have to resort to paying for such a service. Now, idiots like me can just get blogs. (It’s about time technology started working in my favor!) She had to pay for the publishing service and distribute the book herself. With her thinly veiled name changes, and her personal involvement in selling the book itself, it’s quite possible that anyone who purchased the book would know who she is, who the ex is, who the other woman is. But what they probably didn’t already know was what she was really burning to tell the world—the embarrassing, sordid details of his infidelities and sexual practices. Although her true goal was to embarrass him, what she really wanted was love from her readers, or at least pity.
What at first I thought was a rare gem quickly turned into the whiniest pity party. The rarity of the book and the catchy title made me think I had found the equivalent of a CD of some really great local band who never got famous, disbanded, and left the world a long-forgotten, amazing album.
The fear of becoming such a glutton of despair, and even the negative images conjured up by the term blogger (“anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives”- Maddox) kept me from blogging. I’m no longer curious about looking up the author “Andrea L. Emmons” or whatever her real name is. If I did meet her, I’d thank her for this blueprint of what NOT to do. She’s rather like an internet troll in her hatefulness. I think if I can keep myself from forgetting this lesson, and not becoming an example of “a blogging DON’T,” I’ll be fine.
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Urgh, that blogger sounded like a pity-partier asking to get put over someone’s knee. Rants can be entertaining if done right, but that woman – ugh. Oh, and another way not to blog, don’t do those stupid blog memes/award chain letter things! At least , not unless the purpose is to tear them apart and ridicule them. I’ve stopped reading friends’ blogs because they were habitual memers and going in for every trending annoying fake award to come their way. What you said in another post about people forwarding chain letters, I agree with as well, actually, I’d like to see chain originators lose those smug smiles when they find out the tables have been turned on them, so that instead of them laughing at people for getting duped into spreading their hoax, they are the ones getting pwned. And I’ve got a place of my own on the net where I do just that. I Whether it’s that supposedly scary “Carmen Winstead will kill you!” or “Tell 9 sisters you love them with this chain mail, because you could die tomorrow!” leave it to me to expose the manipulative dreck and its real intent for what it is. Hahahaha.. Whoever thought it would be cool to make up stories about dying kids, and throw in some insulting guilt-trips to coerce people into spreading that bogus junk around needs to be trounced, hard.
I have just purchased this book from a library sale in Australia where it has been in circulation for quite a few years and for a ‘vanity’ press had made it quite some distance. I have to admit the catchy title did pull me in and the first few pages were quite depressing but I’m actually starting to really enjoy the book bow. If you look deeper into the subtext it gives a very insightful view into how hard it actually was being a woman of some brains in 70′s America and dealing with the need to vent.”, the stigma if divorce and limited technology. If anything she goes about it with a level of class and quite a few modern day girls could learn a great deal about tact from her.
I’m glad to hear that her book made it all the way to Australia—and was picked up by the library for circulation.
She faced divorce at a time when the popular media said that a woman of her age would have a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married again. I do hope she beat the odds. I agree that she did manage to have some humor about the situation, but since I’ve taken quite a few psychology classes—it was impossible to ignore her lingering emotional problems. (SPOILER ALERT) I read the book about a year ago, and I recall that at the end she was rather happy to see her ex in poor health.