Mrs. Richardson gets dolled up for trip to city

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Slim Ran­dles

Mrs. Richard­son doesn’t often go to the city, but Ardis saw the ad in the big daily paper for the sin­gles group and which church they used for meet­ings. Mrs. Richard­son got all dolled up, and she didn’t for­get to take the “magic” fish­ing fly Mar­vin Pin­cus tied for her.

It was a bass plug on a clothes­pin, and he’d sug­gested, only slightly in jest, that when she met a nice man she was to clip it to her ear as a reminder to stop talk­ing and just smile.

She had it clipped to her col­lar. It made for a good con­ver­sa­tion starter at the cof­fee pot.

So far, Mrs. Richard­son hadn’t said a word except to thank the woman at the door for the blank name tag. She wrote “Mrs. Richard­son” on it and pinned it beneath the bass plug/clothespin/love fly from the Fly Fish­ing Love Cen­ter right here in our town.

Then she poured her­self a cup of cof­fee, while smil­ing qui­etly, and waited for the magic to work.

He came over and she smiled and nodded.

Mrs. Richard­son? So you’re divorced? No? Oh, you must be wid­owed like me then. Oh I see. I’m sorry. Isn’t it ter­ri­ble to lose them? I used to tell Doris, I said Doris, I don’t know what I’d do with­out you so I have to die first. Yes, I can see you know what I mean. But I lost her first.

“Know what, Mrs. Richard­son? That pin you’re wear­ing looks a lot like a type of bass bug I use around here. It is? Well what …! So you’re a fish­er­man too, I take it? No? Well, you’re never too old to learn, are you? Of course not. Say, you’re not very talk­a­tive are you? No. You don’t have to say a thing. I rather like quiet women, actu­ally. Espe­cially when they sip cof­fee so qui­etly and ladylike.

“You know how to fish that par­tic­u­lar fly, Mrs. Richard­son? You cast it to a quiet part of the lake and let it sit there until all the rings in the water around it dis­ap­pear. Then you just twitch the end of the fly rod just a lit­tle … here, let me show you. I hope you don’t mind my hold­ing your cast­ing hand like this. So when those rings dis­ap­pear, we’re going to give that rod just a slight twitch.

“Dri­ves the bass crazy. Uh, Mrs. Richard­son, would you be inter­ested in learn­ing more about fly fish­ing? Yes? Oh, that’s great. Could I … I mean, maybe we could have din­ner and talk about it one of these days? Really? Oh that would be good.

“Lis­ten Mrs. R., you do talk, don’t you?”

“Yes I do.”

This is the best meet­ing I’ve ever attended!”

On the way home, Mrs. Richard­son smiled qui­etly and drove. She might never speak again … except to tell Mar­vin Pin­cus he’s a genius.

Brought to you by “A Cowboy’s Guide to Grow­ing Up Right.” Read a sam­ple at www.slimrandles.com.

Posted by kpotts on Dec 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.