My Budge has been out-of-town for the last three weeks, so I’ve not thought about getting a haircut since how I look is much more important to her than it is to me; however, when I looked in the mirror yesterday and saw Bozo the Clown looking back, it was time to go see Roger or Bobby down at Hall’s Barbershop. Hall’s is an amazing anachronism owned and operated by a fourth generation of Hall men. “Grandpa” Hall opened the shop back in the early 1930s, then “Pop” Hall learned from him and took over when he retired and, after nearly 60 years of cutting hair, Pop retired and now three of his sons: Perry, Don, and Roger and two of Perry’s sons: Lee and Bobby. It’s a great place to get a HAIRCUT and not a HAIRSTYLE. It’s also one of a dying breed.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with this story other than the setting where I ran into my buddy. Seeing him reminded me of a story I love to tell.

I cannot use any names in this story because I like my house intact and not incinerated, and I’d like to have a chance to make it to old age. Mentioning names would be detrimental to any of that occurring. Anyway, this buddy of mine has a precious wife (not as precious as Budge, but who is?) who is friendly and warm and caring and about as sharp as a sack of hammers. Actually, she is quite academically intelligent, but when I met her, I realized I’d found, after a lengthy quest, ONE person with less common sense than I have. Still, she’s a wonderful person . . . just a little slow out of the mental gate at times.

For instance, several years ago, the two of them went on a ten-day Alaskan cruise. While they were packing, she turned to my buddy with a cute little bikini in her hands and asked him to put it in the suitcase. He looked at her and said, “Honey, we’re going to Alaska remember? You know, polar bears? Igloos?” She looked him dead in the eye and, with complete seriousness said, “You said we were leaving from a port so I thought we’d go by the Caribbean on our way to Alaska and I could lay out in the sun on deck.” We live in South Carolina.

Trying to keep a straight face, he replied, “Honey, we’re leaving from GREENVILLE AIRPORT.” She said, “Yeah, so?”

Geography . . . it’s not taught as much anymore.

Another time, my buddy got a call at work. It was his lovely, at the time, fiancée’. She said, “Baby, when you heat up soup on the stove, how do you get the Tupperware gunk off the stove eye?” This was not long after she LITERALLY burned water trying to boil eggs.

Still, crazy as all that may sound, her crowning glory came about six years ago in the spring of the year. My buddy was taking her out for breakfast not too long after sunrise. This happened to be the day after the biennial time change. You know, “Spring forward, Fall back”? Well, they were driving into the sunrise and this precious young wife turned to her husband and said, in all sweetness, sincerity and seriousness,

“Hon, I’ve always wondered . . . how does the Sun know it has to come up an hour earlier in the Spring and an hour later in the Fall?”

Life is often much stranger than fiction can ever be!

Love y’all! Don’t forget to wash your feet! 🙂