HAT TIPS
Hello,
Many of you realize that I am slightly hard of hearing. Well, maybe more than slightly. Okay, dangit, I’m pretty much deaf. If you find me nodding along in agreement, I most likely have not heard a word you said.
When I golfed with Fred, long, long ago, in a country far, far away, it was kind of awkward. We were both pretty much deaf. Our score card was made up of erasures and scribbles. You know, like, “What did you get back there?”
The reply may be, “The fair is in two weeks.”
And the struggles would go on for the entire round. That’s why we always made the playoffs.
And I’ve told you the time the McDonalds drive in brought me enough food to feed a tour bus after I changed my order from a number four to a number six, then just said yes to everything the girl asked me. I mean these order-takers must come right out of auctioneer school. I ended up with four number sixes, six number fours, and 24 iced teas!
This past week it happened again.
Shirley and I are driving along. A happily married couple on the way to make hay. I mean really make hay. You know, with a hay cutter, a rake, and baler.
As we drive along, I have the window open. I always have the window open. I’m a farmer. You have your window open, and you drive along with the wind blowing in, your arm out the window and you are checking crops. Shirley is telling me something and I am nodding in agreement. Not hearing a word she says.
Then I catch a few words! Forty years! Renew vows! I began to rant. “We’re not taking a day from haying to renew our vows! That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard! If you think that after forty years, I am going to stand up in that hot church again and renew those vows, you had better think again! We have hay to cut. Hay to bale.”
When I was done with my rant, Shirley asks, “Were you listening? Not our vows. Lee and Kay are going to renew their vows after forty years. You were best man. They want you to attend.”
“No way am I taking off haying to go to their wedding again.”
“There will be free beer and supper.”
“Okay, I guess another day won’t matter on the hay.”
And so it goes. We take off haying, along with a couple of hundred other people, to go to an anniversary party. Turned out it was a pretty darn good party. The music was good, the food was good, and the beer was good. We spent the night in Bismarck and headed for the hay field early Sunday morning.
But on the drive home, I got to thinking about what Uncle Hugh (a bachelor) used to say, “There never was a good romance that a marriage couldn’t cure!”
Later,
Dean