My (40m) Post-Divorce Crane Story

My wife (also 40) and I divorced just over a year ago. We were married for five years. She became a stay-at-home mom after our second child when we bought a house. <br><br>We were together for nearly 14 years before she cheated on me. About a year before the divorce, I caught her in a lie over and over again which led me to audit all her expenses. After several days of work, I found with absolute certainty that she had been having an affair with a regular at the local coffee shop she often went to. She always said they were just friends until the truth came out. She admitted to it all when I hit her with the math -- a $500 coffee bill per month is not just for one person. I gave her an ultimatum to end the affair, and if I found out that she continued seeing him, I would divorce her. <br><br>I came home from work another day to find her suitcases already packed. She eventually ended up moving in with him. <br><br>We have an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son. I pay a lot of child support. This has allowed her to keep her full-time stay-at-home mom position, meaning I see the kids most nights of the week. I leave them at her door in the mornings. She never says much of anything when we talk. I had considered asking her parents to tell her to come up with something to say when I see her. She brought me coffee while we talked about the kids, and I found it ironic. <br><br>I reached out to an old colleague who had also recently gone through a divorce. She let me know she was interested in dating again, and we started seeing each other. I made sure to take the kids to a fair share of events in which she was involved so they would recognize her and understand we were dating -- we never dated before. Shortly before the divorce was settled, we moved in together. <br><br>It was unusually cold in January and February where we live, so I was brining my garbage cans inside at night to keep them from freezing to solid ice blocks. This was a common practice in the neighborhood, as the garbage trucks didn't run every night. I was often forgetting, so I set a recurring daily reminder on my phone for 9pm to bring them in. I lived in a cul-de-sac with maybe 8 houses including mine. I would leave out the front door, walk to the street, and head right to the garbage cans as the cul-de-sac is shaped like a U. <br><br>One day, I opened the front door to find a large crane parked on my front lawn. There was a cherry picker half way extended from the crane with a man in an orange jumpsuit standing in the basket. A small dolly with two garbage cans was hanging from the hook just above the basket. The man in the basket waved at me. I was in shock, though managed to wave back. There were two men in the cab of the crane. I ran back into the house to look out the window to see where my neighbors were. None of them were outside, and I could tell by the lack of movement in the windows that they didn't even know it was there. <br><br>When I stepped back out the door, I realized how getting garbage cans was such an overkill in equipment and decided to just take the garbage cans down without using the Crane. Before I could get halfway to it, one of the men in the crane jumped out and ran over to me. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and earbuds. He looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. He was holding a tablet with a picture of the garbage cans on it and a GPS pin over the top showing the crane's location. There was an "OK" button in the middle of the screen in the shape of a crane. <br><br>"Are you the homeowner?" He asked. <br><br>I said yes, and he handed me the tablet, asking me to sign with my finger over the screen. There was a signature box just below the "OK" button. I ignored it and pressed "OK" so it would stop looking at me. <br><br>He reached his hand down over the tablet and pointed to the signature box, his pinky actually touching the screen. "Is this your signature?" He asked. <br><br>I said it was as the screen went black. "Well, it's official -- these garbage cans are yours." He said. <br><br>When he walked back to the crane, I decided to walk to the garbage cans. I didn't want to just leave this random guy standing in my cul-de-sac. <br><br>"By the way, how did you get in here? This is a private cul-de-sac." I inquired. <br><br>He looked in the Crane, and the other man jumped out with a tablet. This man didn't wear a jumpsuit, but I recognized him as the regular she would often meet at the coffee shop. <br><br>"Is this your signature?" He asked. <br><br>"Where do I even know you from?"<br><br>"Your ex-wife's boyfriend." He responded.<br><br>This guy was actually really clever, I thought. <br><br>I confirmed it was my signature, and his colleague drove the Crane out of the cul-de-sac. <br><br>They drove off before I could get out a full sentence of "But w--"<br><br>I checked the garbage cans and they were empty. I walked over to her house and told her that two men in a crane had just tried to give me garbage cans, thinking maybe it had been a wrong address. It wasn't a wrong address. <br><br>She said "I knew it! He's been saying we were going to do this for a month."<br><br>"You knew they were going to do this?"<br><br>"Yeah, Wayne has it in for you or something -- he's been making fun of you for weeks." <br><br>Wayne is her boyfriend's name. I hadn't ever heard it until that day. <br><br>"You could have warned me."<br><br>"Oh yeah, I guess so." <br><br>"Do you want these garbage cans?"<br><br>"No, I think they can just stay in the cul-de-sac." <br><br>I walked back over to the garbage cans to find them gone, specifically leaving in their place an empty coffee cup with the name of our local coffee shop written on it in black Sharpie. I laughed out loud. <br><br>&#x200B;