Bubba signifies loyalty in its purest and strongest form. You can call him at 3:00am in the morning and ask for help, and he will show up without needing the cause. Bubba has a tendency to form magical opinions on issues that are relevant to the ways of experience. Bubba’s opinions make you believe he has thought about the issue long and hard, but he has chosen to stay mummed about it. Bubba owns the credit on my belief that: silence is the common language of everyone.

It was at the end of my film’s premier in Seattle and I was getting ready to leave the theatre. Bubba was there ever so selflessly for the whole day helping with everything. As we were leaving the theatre, Bubba reached out to tell me something privately. He pulled me to a quiet corner and with a low and cautious tone said, “you would have never made a film had you married Fiona”

When I was growing up, I never had any permutation of a dream that considered me as a married man. Marriage was never a part of any plan. During college years, marrying young was a trend. Meeting your spouse in college seemed like a great idea because the assumption was that those are the only years you’re surrounded by so many smart girls. By that assumption, Liza would be a great choice for me because she was the smartest girl in the class. However, today we know that marrying Liza wouldn’t work because I still have a penis and Liza is no longer interested in such organs. Liza ended up marrying Becky and they live in Montreal.

On the other hand, my parents never forced a criterion for marriage. For instance, my mother who suspended her teaching career to be a full time mom would never ask my sister to do the same. In fact, that’d be awkward because my sister continued working when she had her first child.

Fiona chose to get married, and move to LA after we broke up back in 2006. Don’t get me wrong; Fiona was smart since she had already found her ideal husband before we broke up. Fiona wrote me once and said, “I’m happy. I’m glad I met someone with the same socioeconomic background. I’ve never wanted to marry someone who’s smarter than me”. I believe the phrase Fiona was looking for was ‘smarter than I am’. Fiona always believed it is important to keep the grammar intact, even if there are many conceptual layers in a phrase. She cared about “the optics”, maybe because she believed the spotlights were always on her.

I knew so well I wasn’t ready to get married with Fiona. I believed a happy life required a lot more than a career and a pretty girl. Or maybe, the problem is that I use that line on dates quite frequently. I thought a wife like Fiona would prevent me from working on anything that excluded her, including getting to know other beautiful and smart women. So instead of spending my years becoming a more marriageable male, I was actually learning about other things that didn’t necessarily include notions like love or forever.

Ironically, Fiona was in Seattle on the day Bubba shared his wisdom with me. What are the chances! A close friend of mine asked me to go to the same event where Fiona was. I considered it, but then I thought: some people choose to break the mold, and some people take a trip to LA.