insignificant other

INSIGNIFICANT OTHER

A husband turns into the insignificant
other if his wife does not make him look good,
because he turns into her side-kick if he can't
be coveted by desperate wives who’re in his hood.

Although my dear wife tells me that she doesn’t love it
when I show interest in the other wives who’re in
the neighborhood, I don’t approach whom I don’t covet,
for if I did she’d kick her side-kick in the shin.

I added the second quatrain on 2/12/10.

In his obituary for Ed McMahon, Richard Severo writes in the NYT on June 24, 2009:
Mr. McMahon regarded his friendship with Johnny Carson as a marriage of sorts. “Most comic teams are not good friends or even friends at all,” he wrote in “Here’s Johnny.” “Laurel and Hardy didn’t hang out together, Abbott and Costello weren’t best of friends.” But, he added, “Johnny and I were the happy exception.” “For 40 years Johnny and I were as close as two nonmarried people can be,” he wrote. “And if he heard me say that, he might say, ‘Ed, I always felt you were my insignificant other.’ ”


6/24/09