You want to keep them as quiet as possible. You don’t want them to be highly publicized, like the divorce a few years back in Palm Beach, Florida, involving wealthy socialites Peter and Roxanne Pulitzer, in which Peter claimed that Roxanne had slept with a three-foot trumpet. Naturally the national news media found this to be far more interesting than anything that has ever happened in the Middle East, so now everybody has heard about it. Roxanne Pulitzer could visit a remote and primitive Amazon jungle tribe, and the tribespeople would all gather around her and make trumpet sounds.

So you want to avoid letting your intimate secrets out. Not that I am suggesting for one second that you have ever slept with a trumpet. You are more the bassoon type.

Eventually the divorce will become final, and you can start picking up the broken pieces of your life and selling them to pay off your legal bills. But also you must think about the future, and, yes, meeting someone new. You must not be afraid. Oh, sure, you got burned and you got hurt. But that is no reason to give up. You must not be afraid. You must show the same kind of gumption as the cowboy, who, if he gets thrown off a horse, climbs right back on, and if he gets thrown off again, climbs right back on again, and so on, until virtually all of his brain cells are dead.

Back to Chapter 1.

Bazooka bubble gum, 47

Bra Strap Research Center, 29

Clam goaders, 48

Cleaver, Beaver, 14

Deviled Egg Transporter, 27

Elephant Man’s Disease, 6

Esplanade, Victor, 50

Flag, Capture the, 42

Giant albino turkeys, 19

Godzilla, 73, 74

Guard, Right, 16

Harriet, Ozzie and, 17

Helmsley, Leona, 33

Indonesian Fighting Snake, 82

Jell-O, 26

Karamazov, Brothers, 6

LeGume, Baron, 30

LeGoon, Dwayne R., Jr., 49

Lodge, Out O’Town Motor, 78

Loins of Passion, 30

Marcos, Ferdinand and Imelda, 80-81

Mayonnaise, XI Mongolian Death Flu, 51

Mutant argument topics, 67

National Rifle Association, 43

Nature, Mother, 22

Pancreas, rat, 10

Perot, H. Ross, 33

Pez, 48

Planet of the Ideal Women, 27

Pope, the, IX Princess Diana, having a wedding as nice as, 46

“Pumpkin Surprise,” 47

Roni, Zoo-, 74

Sea Cucumber Island Resort, 56-57

Secretion, Compound Annualized Rate of, 62

Service, Internal Revenue, 26

Seuss, Dr., 74

Sin, living in, 13-14

Somebody, Archduke, 66

Squid, having sex with, X Staff, joint Chiefs of, 27

Strategic Defense Initiative, 71

Strychnine, IX Summer Bosom Camp, 24

Taylor, Elizabeth, 36

Trumpets, having sex with, 85, 87

Tupperware, hurling, 14

Tupperware, role in sex act, 27

Urchins, sea, 7

Whip, Cool, 20

Whitman, “Slim,” 82

Wipes, Handi-, 45

World Series, IX

Ziggy, 62

Zippos, 3