Skip to main content

Post: Summer 1994


A wife questioning her husband, for some reason suspecting me.

 “Who is all going to be there and what kind of ‘Editorial Meeting’ is this going to be?” she asked of her husband, while she looked me in the eyes, scrutinizing my every facial expression and hand gesture for any one of the FBI’s Twelve Signs of Truth Omission:

 1.) Darting eyes
2.) Rapid blinking
3.) How long my eyes are closed.
4.) Looking up to the right
5.) Eye shift from left to right.
6.) Looking down to the right.
7.) Eye movement when smiling
8.) Face touching.
9.) Pursed lip actions
10.) Excessive sweating.
11.) Blushing
12.) Head shaking 

(All of which are why I’ve learned to always wear sunglasses and an ear bud to such interrogations to counteract suspicion.)

  She stepped away from the kitchen counter that she had been leaning against to close the gap between them, and lowered her head to catch hubby’s gaze toward the floor.

 Funny how your childhood comes back to a person during times like that, when you find yourself looking into Johnny’s mother’s eyes that somehow say, inexplicably,

 “What demented deeds and doings have you infected my son (or husband in this case), with this time, you scum-sucking bottom feeder?”

 It’s like I’ve unwittingly affected my friends like that all my life, at least their wives--or their mothers--have thought so. Do I look like someone who would rather drink a few beers around a campfire or someone who would rather sip distilled water and discuss socio-economic stress disorders?

 Okay, so I’m both. (You can’t imagine the buzz you can get from three bottles of distilled water.)

Comments

j barker said…
did you forget your password how about black&white something VWBug do you read this once a month??????????????? I know you and getting ooolllllllllddddddddddd and slower but
June 11, 2019 at 2:25 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Memorial to Jerry Solom August 24, 1945 -- July 23, 2019 No. 2

               Jerry Solom, August 24, 1945 -- July 23, 2019 This is a random image memorial post about my late friend, who died a year ago. I wrote a memoir/tribute to him in the Wannaskan Almanac on July 23, 2020. Here's the link to that: http://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2020/07/thursday-july-23-2020.html Me and Jerry with Marion in background in Stonington, Maine in 2015 prior to setting sail to Hull, MA. This is an excerpt from the story  "A Louisiana Ruse" by Steven G. Reynolds Published in 2000 in THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota's Original Art, History & Humor Journal      This describes the end of a 43-hour bus ride we took from Fargo, North Dakota to Slidell, Louisiana, where Jerry's boat was in dock prior to his voyage to Norway in 2000. I was there as part of the maintenance crew, accompanying Jerry, his son Terry Solom of Minneapolis, and their fr...
1 comment
Read more

Mac Furlong: Real Hunter

   This last Tuesday, October 1st, in Reed River, Sven saw Mac Furlong hurrying down Main Street on his way to sign up for the Big Buck Contest at Normies On Main . Mac was wearing his Reed River Bank clothes so Sven didn’t recognize him right off, Mac walking so serious like, but Sven ought to have known that about this time of year all the local deer hunters are getting real anxious. Beginning soon after the Roseau County Fair in July, hunter types begin walking about the outdoors sports departments in their local hardware stores and sporting goods shops salivating over the latest hunting gear, wearing at least one parcel of florescent orange on their person as if to let the ordinary public know that, they, in fact, are real hunters of a serious nature, although temperatures are yet in the eighties. “See here, my florescent orange insulated cap with earflaps?” “Lo and behold, my florescent-orange camo jacket with elbow padding and several important pockets?” “Check o...
3 comments
Read more

The Chicken Coop Revisited

 “Just  of Scientific Mind: The Chicken Coop Revisited.” by Steven G. Reynolds Gramma Eff was not deaf, not dumb, nor was she blind. She was not daft this Gramma Eff, just of scientific mind. She wore knee boots, a long white coat, goggles, special gloves, and entered in, a study of, chickens, and their loves. “Chickens, and their loves?” you ask, incredulously, with one raised brow, as if of what she studied hence made a mockery of you now. Gramma kept her chickens clean and altho you might think it mean she washed their feet, their beak, their bod --the neighbors thought it very odd. That no one out should enter in Gramma’s little chicken pen For Gramma too, removed her clothes her boots, her coat, her goggles--those gloves, that Gramma always wore whenever she opened that very door of all her chicken coops there we’ve learned strangers there, their presence spurned Gramma found these chickens smart, they liked color, music, art. Gramma learned their innate needs went far b...
2 comments
Read more