As the holidays approach, we are planning a visit to Jonesboro, Arkansas, my hometown. I always look forward to visiting home. With each visit, some friend of mine sees fit to tell my wife, Landi, yet another ‘Bill Story. Some are quite entertaining and many are grossly exaggerated. Let’s just say there are few things left that will shock her and it seems pretty damn clear that I should never, ever run for public office.
Sometimes, you see an old friend, and for some reason, you just don’t recognize them. This happened several years ago at my mother’s funeral. My sister, my brother and I were greeting people after they paid their last respects to Mom at the Funeral Home. Mom had a lot of friends, many of whom I have not seen in 20 or 25 years. Most had a ‘Bill Story’ for us to suffer through. We all had some pretty good laughs about cars some of the things I did years ago. There are a lot of ‘Bill stories’ out there. Not all of them are me. Some are really ‘Matt’ stories, but it’s just more believable when folks say it was me.
At some point about half way through the viewing, a strikingly beautiful woman entered the room. She didn’t walk. She flowed into the room as if she were borne on a breeze. She greeted and chatted with my sister. She spoke briefly with my brother. They seemed to know her. She approached me and paused, smiling. I smiled back. She stuck her hands out, and I took both her hands in mine. I looked back at her beautiful eyes, wondering for all the world, who in the hell this woman was. For just a moment she looked deeply into my eyes. She winked at me and leaned in close. I broke a sweat. She whispered in my ear, “Bill, do you know what we share?”
Oh God.
This woman was clearly too beautiful to have engaged in debauchery with me back in the day, but I had debauched a lot back in the 1970s. I was getting dizzy. The room was starting to spin. I was going into brain lock. I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t move. I could feel my wife’s eyes burning a hole in the side of my head. Really? We ‘share’ something? Wonder what that could be?
She could tell I was surprised. She smiled again, her eyes twinkled and she casually brushed a few stray strands of hair from her face. She laughed and playfully slapped me on the arm.
“Oh Silly!” she said, smiling, almost laughing. “We share a birthday!”
Thank you, Jesus.
At that moment, I knew two things. First, I knew who this beautiful woman was, and secondly not everyone should fear getting older.
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