“Wow! Was she good looking?!”
I couldn’t decide if my husband was making an emphatic declaration or asking a question about the woman who had administered his lie detector test. It bugged me.
“The deputy was good looking. Check. But what did she ask you?”
“Everything.”
There are times when holding a conversation with Sherwood, my husband of thirty plus years, is a bit like being in a police interrogation.
“So give me an example of ‘everything,’” I prompted. Then I adjusted the interrogation room light to shine more squarely into his eyes. I was trying to pry information out of him about the lie detector test he had taken to qualify for the Osceola County Volunteer Mounted Posse. Kitty, his horse, has her lie detector test next week.
“You know. Did I ever do drugs? Do I know any felons? Am I related to any felons? Is there anything in my past that I could have been arrested for and wasn’t? Any domestic violence? But this was before the actual lie detector test. We were just chatting.”
“And . . .” I prompted.
“And I said, ‘No, kind of, yes, possibly and does my wife throwing pancakes at me count?”
I felt myself pale.
“You ratted me out. How could you do that? You ratted me out to the Osceola county sheriff’s office. I can’t believe you.”
He looked sheepish.
“Did I mention that the officer was really good looking?”
“Arrrggggg! But did you explain? There were extenuating circumstances and that it was justifiable pancake violence? That you were already playing softball nine days a week. That I had four little kids, six and under. And that you were wanting to join your seventeenth softball league? Did you? Did you? And that I just snapped and the pancakes were there on the griddle, and then they were in my hand, but I don’t remember how they got in my hand or when I started throwing them at you? And that Aric, who was all of six, yelled, ‘Incoming!!’ and then he dragged all his siblings to safety. And is it any wonder that he joined the Army? Did you tell her that part?”
“Yes. Some. Not true. True. Hardly seventeen . . .”
And that’s when I commenced to beating on him with a rubber hose.
Actually, I’d like to join the Osceola Volunteer Mounted Posse myself, but I’m afraid I can’t pass the lie detector test, seeing as how I have a rather checkered past and all. Oh, I didn’t go streaking (naked) on motorcycles or anything like that the way MY HUSBAND DID but I have had a bit of an Irish temper and you know how those people can get.
Linda (Hotcakes) Zern
