Quite possibly the worst Thanksgiving breakup story ever ...

Usually bad breakup stories are reserved for Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day. This one just happened to occur over Thanksgiving week.

I met her while I worked in the Print Shop in South Philly. If Kim Deal [The Pixies; The Breeders - "Cannonball"] needed yet another twin sister, she was more than qualified. She may have been the Proto-MILF. She was a proof reader, I was a layout guy. She wrote poetry and liked my artwork. She was 28, I was 22. She was separated (her husband was really flaked; Goth before Goth was Goth, you know; never went out during the day, didn't work, smoked a LOT). We got real flirty at work, went out after work a couple times, just for a drink or two. One afternoon (we got out at 3:00 on Fridays) she took me down to Roosevelt Park, across the street from the Vet - now Citizens Bank Park. We started making out, in her VW Beetle. We really going at it. She couldn't exactly take me home, and I was living in Jersey, so she gave me, well, you know ... something to remember the day by.

I still do.

By the following spring, we were super serious, but she wasn't divorced yet. I had moved back to Philly to be closer to her. We'd go to her poetry readings and openings. Everyone in her nouveau-beatnik clique knew who I was. During breaks, we'd slip off to have sex in bathrooms, and stuff like that. All my friends at my neighborhood bar knew her, too. Then her kids started asking me to stay over. Her husband got even nuttier. She wanted to reconcile with him - for his mental health, such as it was. I said fine, "Let's take the Summer off."

In the meantime, I got a new job, so it wasn't a workplace situation anymore. I met new girls, my "horizons" expanded. However, her whacko husband - who all the time begged her to come back - didn't want to now. She moved in with her parents in Upper Darby and tried to make another go of it with me. I was seeing a couple of much less, shall we say "dramatic", women at the new place and didn't really share her enthusiasm to try again. But, being the sweetheart I am, and attempting to make a nice ending to the story, I went out with her a couple more times. She must have thought I was just running a game on her; that my heart wasn't really in it anymore; that I was just looking for sex. Feeling used and betrayed, she tried to snuff me in my sleep with a pillow. She wasn't really trying that hard, but the point was made. She went home that night.

The following Wednesday - the day before Thanksgiving - I received a letter from her stating that we would both be better off without each other, and that I shouldn't try to call her because she wouldn't talk to me. Even though I had other things going on, the attempted murder and subsequent "Dear Randy" letter shook me up quite a bit. I went to the Thanksgiving parade in Philadelphia and watched it alone in the cold rain.

By December 1st, I was adjusting to life in Florida.

I made it till March.

I thought that I'd shaken her of my scent [so to speak], until one April afternoon after I moved back. I'd managed to sub-out my apartment while I was gone and returned to my old neighborhood like nothing had happened. As I was doing my daily run up at Penn, behind me I heard a screech, crash, yelling and screaming. She had driven her VW up unto the curb and tried to drive me through a store window.

Missed me!!!

She told the cops that her kids were fighting in the back seat and she was trying to calm them down when she lost the wheel. Oh, yeah, I'm beyond "Stab-worthy" ... I'm "Smother-him-with-a-pillow-and-if-that-doesn't-work-run-the-Bug-up-on-the-sidewalk-by-Franklin-Field-the-Friday-of-Penn-Relays-worthy"

About a year after that, she called me to borrow some money to move to Arizona.

That was all twenty years ago this week.