The Time I Almost Read My Parents' Divorce

It was a million degrees hot in Baton Rouge when I looked up my parents' divorce.

It wasn't even the first time bad weather had caused weird shit in my line of work. Once a former coworker looked up some parking tickets because it was a zero degree Minnesota winter and he didn't want to go outside quite yet. That set off a chain of events that led to a sitting attorney general being accused of trolling for anonymous gay sex in a public park.

Anyway. East Baton Rouge Parish had a new courthouse since I'd last been there. It had air conditioning and a lot of places to sit. I was there for a job, but I had wrapped it up pretty quick. I had time, and nothing to do but head back out to that soul burning heat by the convention center.

So I sat down at the terminal and looked up the case docket for Caskey v. Caskey, East Baton Rouge Parish, Family Division.

There are two kinds of divorce files: short and fast, or long and ugly. This one wasn't short.

I remembered as much. I remembered a lot of things in the file. Other things were unfamiliar. Still others I thought I remembered differently.

And there it was, in all its ugly glory. After years of reading divorces till I could speed read the damn things, I could finally see how everything went down, with a researcher's cold eye instead of a confused teenager's.

All I had to do was walk up to the desk and request it.

I looked at the screen for a long time. Then I cleared the search, left the building and got a root beer float at the Frost Top.

I've never looked it up since.

And now one day you, my Nonvoters, are going to be able to look up my own divorce from your mother.

Maybe you'll read this first. Maybe you won't.

Maybe you'll never even think to look it up, or want to.

Maybe you'll ask me about it first, and I have no idea what I'll tell you.

I'm not going to tell you to do what I did. It's your god given right to choose differently from me.

And I'm not going to tell you why I didn't go through with it. Divorce is a lot of things on paper and a hell of a lot more that aren't. If you haven't learned that by the time you read this, now is the time to do it.

I'm not even going to explain anything you might find. If you don't know, not feel but know, that I love you more than I even understand, then words aren't going to change that. And that's all that matters.

All I'm doing is telling you what I did in your position.

And if you want to do differently, I'll drive you to the Daley Center myself.