Q: A friend of mine has terrible judgement. They’re always making the same predictable decisions, impulses, really, that always have the same miserable results. I often wonder if they’re even aware of their behaviours, even know the patterns they’ve established. How do you tell a friend like this that they have terrible judgement?

A: How indeed, Judgey McJudgerson.

I have a few questions.

Did your friend have a squabble with her boyfriend over inviting his best friend to their wedding, break up with her boyfriend over it, six months later marry her boyfriend’s best friend, bankrupting her father who offered up an open bar at her wedding in their small, but not small enough for an open bar at a wedding town, especially one to which the whole town was invited, in Northern Ontario, where he ran a far-too-good-for-a-small-town-in-Northern-Ontario grocery store allowing the locals to run up a tab (which they never paid because contrary to the starry eyes of big city folk, small town folk are assholes) and then leave her boyfriend’s best friend, go back to her boyfriend, realize she’d been more right than wrong the first time, go to live with her aunt-expecting-better-from-her-favourite-niece for a year who insisted her smart-in-all-things-except-marrying-boyfriends niece attend the local not-quite-a-university-but-not-really-a-college either (during that year she would give her younger adoring cousin her Roots shoes which her younger adoring cousin wore all winter, feeling cool for the first time in her life, never forgetting how much better an older sister her older cousin was than her older sister) go back to living with her parents and younger brother, now relocated to southern Ontario where her younger brother would years later embezzle their retired father’s entire life savings from his career as a travelling salesman, causing him to to live above a diner with said son, wife, and grandchildren in a trailer park near the US border where he became the cook, turning the diner into a much sought after tourist destination within weeks (my cousin, his daughter, my mother’s niece would later and lovingly pull the plug to end his life: “Dad, squeeze my hand if you want me to pull the plug” <faint barely perceptible squeeze>), go to teacher’s college while living with her parents in southern Ontario, meet a nice man at teacher’s college (who would hate being a teacher because kids are assholes and so she supported him while he became a custodian instead), marry him, have three children who became in no particular order: 1) international human rights lawyer, 2) high school principal, 3) renowned restauranteur, and live happily to this very day in The Big Smoke?

Did your wealthy (yet still caring of others less wealthy so not an asshole like most wealthy people) friend list his income on a dating site, hoping to meet a nice lady who liked fine wines and travel while also helping out friends and family in need as much as he did, having finally extricated himself from an unsatisfactory relationship with a woman much further down the economic ladder (in his workplace, no less!) who would only enjoy with him what she could afford on her own dime, her being a poor single mother in an ongoing and increasingly acrimonious dispute costing her and an equally impoverished single father thousands of dollars over an inexplicable to EVERYBODY including their lawyers battle over full as opposed to shared custody of their lone child they both agreed should go to an expensive private school in neither of their neighbourhoods chock-a-block with perfectly good public schools (so that wasn’t the source of the conflict), and who had a habit when they were dating of repeat calling him from her cubicle to his office if he didn’t pick up on the first call to discuss this ongoing and increasingly acrimonious dispute (he had what seemed to me an incredibly stressful job, on call constantly, in the shittiest company imaginable that spent two years trying to constructively dismiss him, again – inexplicable to EVERYBODY – including the company lawyers) hanging up in a rage if he offered to help financially with any of it, or mentioned mediation, or any number of seemingly helpful suggestions that turned out to be landmines (but such is the way of a world he knew nothing about in spite of having grown up witnessing his own parents do the exact same thing to each other except over a rickety old trailer on a dusty lot they referred to as a “cottage”) instantly meet an obvious to EVERYBODY (including their eventual lawyers) but him shameless lying grifter, Becky Sharp without the morality, who would regularly “borrow” his Porsche to go on solo trips to New York (from his expensive condo in Ottawa) having claimed on the dating site to be an international consultant (on what was never clear to me – or him – but apparently the sex was so incredible he neglected to ask) not interested in having children (ditto for him) who somehow, in spite of condoms and foams and pills, got pregnant (one of the solo trips to New York nine months prior to the birth involved a previous mark, I mean, gentleman of even more means from the same dating site) immediately moved herself into his expensive condo for the length of time required to establish co-habitation, moved out, and began demanding money as he became increasingly concerned about the future of the child he wasn’t sure was his but being a citizen of upstanding moral character took on as his responsibility anyway, eventually quitting his job he realized he didn’t want or need, to be a full-time stay-at-home dad to the bundle of joy he had no idea he’d wanted until he was born, while continuing to pay off said bundle of joy’s shameless lying grifter mother since moved on to another mark but who is safely out of child-bearing years and who – I shit you not – eventually found legitimate employment as a consultant for a very wealthy, very old, something or other, and actually suggested our friend stop paying her to let him be a full-time stay-at-home dad to their son, now in a public school close by his expensive condo so he can come home for lunch, which he will not do because he’s fine, just fine, with how it is?

Did your friend go on a one week vacation to Puerta La Cruz, Venezuela, in the mid-80s, lay eyes on a waiter named Ramon Nunez at the Marina bar,

return home to Toronto, break up with her latest boyfriend, give up her charming affordable apartment (oh my word I almost died just now typing that), quit her unionized job – the best job she would ever quit (ditto), and return to Puerta La Cruz to live happily ever after (six weeks before returning to Toronto, homeless and unemployed, after a patron in the Marina bar who spoke English, Enrique, said, “Go home. You don’t belong here. Also Ramon hasn’t told you this because he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings and he doesn’t speak English nor you Spanish but he has a child with another woman and they would like to get married but it’s difficult to do while you’re here living with his family”) [in their corrugated tin hut on the side of a mountain]?

As an aside, here is the break-up conversation she had with her latest boyfriend before surprising an unsuspecting Ramon with a return-to-live-happily-ever-after visit to Puerta La Cruz, Venezuela:

“Wait, what? You’re breaking up with me to go live with a Venezuelan peasant?”

“Ramon is not a peasant. He’s a waiter.”

“Do you know anything about Venezuela? Unless he owns the bar, he’s a peasant. Does he even speak English? Do you speak Spanish? Jesus Christ, I figured, sure, Katie’ll hook up with an American co-ed on vacation for a week, but a peasant? You’re breaking up with me to go live with a Venezuelan peasant? What am I supposed to tell my friends? Holy shit this is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me and I’m a Conservative working with a bunch of granola chomping chowder head Dippers at Queen’s Park. Jesus Christ. A peasant? In Venezuela? By the way, I bought you a stereo so I could play some decent music at your place but I guess I’ll give it to somebody who isn’t going to live with a Venezuelan peasant in a corrugated tin hut on the side of a mountain. Jesus Christ.”

“I’m quite sure Ramon has an apartment of his own in town. And anyway, we’re in love,

and I wasn’t expecting it either, nor was I about to have a fling with an American co-ed, o ye of little faith.” (Total lie – I had two flings with American co-eds who were also on one-week holidays at the same resort Ev and I smuggled Ramon into, as locals weren’t allowed in unless they were working there.)

To be fair, he did help me give all my books to the library, winter clothes to the thrift shop, and find someone to rent my charming affordable apartment (excuse me, I think I’m going to be sick), a lovely young woman, freshly divorced, whom he immediately hit on and I believe may even have married and divorced after they had children because we don’t all have your unerring judgement, Judgey McJudgerson. Or maybe they’re still together? Who knows? But they never would have met if not for my terrible judgement, would they. And Ramon might not be starring in the porn videos I realize now were made by the German guy whose apartment we stayed in before I started running out of money and went to live with Ramon and his family of 8 brothers and sisters, two parents, two grandparents, and an aunt and uncle, in a corrugated tin hut on the side of a mountain, either.

Look, my point is, Judgey, friends with terrible judgement make the galaxy go ‘round for you, me, all of us. They’re pretty much why kids show up in this galaxy at all, ffs. People without terrible judgement think ahead to what it means to bring kids into this galaxy and don’t. Look around, none of the best parents have kids. None. Because they don’t have terrible judgement, Judgey McJudgerson.

Anyway, just so you don’t think I’m a totally oblivious asshole, before I left Puerta La Cruz, Venezuela, I gave Ramon my last thousand dollars from my unionized job at the Ontario NDP (a job I would get back and quit twice more, once to return to Acapulco, Mexico to live happily ever after with Ariel, a waiter at Eve’s discotheque, who didn’t even like me, I’m pretty sure, although his much nicer friend, another waiter, did, and even came to see me off at the airport 5 weeks later sans Ariel) so he could come live with me in Toronto, even though I was technically homeless, which, of course, he did not do. He did, however, call me from the Marina bar, an interpreter, an English speaking patron (not Enrique, for whom I would’ve returned to Puerta La Cruz to live happily ever after with if I’d had any money) at the ready, at the number I’d given him, that of my boyfriend two boyfriends back who I would later marry (inexplicable to EVERYBODY, no doubt including our lawyers when we later divorced) and with whom I’d resumed living, being homeless, to tell me he bought a car with the money I gave him so he could help get his co-waiters to and from work and thank you very much but he would no longer be able to come to Toronto to live with me happily ever after as I may have been hoping.

To my ever lasting relief having realized how awkward it would be, Ramon moving in with me and my boyfriend two boyfriends back.

But you know what, Judgey? Thanks for the question because I just realized in answering it – just now, just this very second – that for all these years I thought it was my fault, my terrible judgement, marrying a man I broke up with half a dozen times, having three kids with him, then divorcing him to be with the lovely man I’m with now, twenty plus years, zero break-ups and counting, later, a lovely man who doesn’t judge others – but – who the hell marries a woman who’s broken up with him a half dozen times?!

Talk about terrible judgement, eh? Imagine, all these years, I thought it was me with the terrible judgement and it was him!

Still, I gotta hand it to him, without his terrible judgement there would be three less stellar kids making our galaxy three stellar kids better.

So there, Judgey McJudgerson, not only does terrible judgement make the galaxy go ‘round for you, me, all of us -it makes stellar kids to top it off.