I was coming in from a job recently when my bride, Lottie, called to see if I wanted to stop for lunch at one of the local cafes. Yup. She already was there when I pulled up. We had a nice lunch and I only got griped at a little bit. When we left, being the perfect gentleman, I let her go first. We were headed in the same direction down a two-lane paved road on which, for some reason, the county had decided to put a 35-mph speed limit. Everybody pretty much ignores it. Lottie took off like her feet were on fire and her butt was a'catchin', and I was a ways back, trying to keep up. All of a sudden, I looked up and saw one of the county's finest zooming up in my rear-view mirror. Sure enough, on came the lights. I had to think of something fast!
As soon as I stopped, I jumped out of the truck and headed back toward the cop. This freaked him out pretty good and he jumped out behind his door with his hand on his gun. I stopped at the front of his car and said, “I know I was speeding, but there's a reason!” “Let's hear it,” he said. “I was eating at the cafe when that little ol' lady in that Lincoln left without paying,” I said. “The girls asked me to get her license number!” “What Lincoln?” he asked. “Right there, going around the curve,” I pointed. I figured that with Lottie driving like the Little Old Lady from Pasadena, he'd never catch her. He told me, “Wait right here.” Yah, right. He raced off and I turned around and headed home another way. I figured Lottie and I would have a pretty good laugh over supper.
What I didn't count on was that Barney Fife had a heavier lead foot than Lottie, even with her big head start. After a couple miles, he caught her and made her go back to the cafe. The waitresses all know her and everybody except the cop and Lottie had a good laugh.
Everything was fine 'til I got home. I didn't know that she had been “caught.” When I came in, all innocent like, she was waving a broom around. I asked her if she was cleaning up or fixin' to go for a ride. For some reason, my bride had gone into bin-Lottie mode and figured I had something to do with it. Maybe it had to do with the description the cop gave her and the hooting of the restaurant staff - purely circumstantial evidence if you ask me! There could have been lots of slightly twisted well drillers on that road.
Supper consisted of hot tongue and cold shoulder. I was starting to detect the early warning signs of PMS, which, in Lottie's case, stands for Pass My Shotgun. I decided that it might be time to commence that 24-hour pump test I'd been putting off for a while, before I succumbed to death by cast-iron frying pan.
She's pretty well settled down by now as long as the subject doesn't come up, so if you see her with me at a trade show, leave the eat-and-run questions to a minimum.
ND