Small Town Talk

I was driving home from my Very Good Friend Mike's house yesterday, and stopped to get some gas for my very hungry car. As soon as I stepped outside, I heard a long, slow whistle. Coming from a very creepy man standing nearby.

Don't look, don't look, don't look. Keep pumping your gas.

Hey, lady, nice car!

Uh, thanks? (Well, maybe he was whistling at my car and not at me.)

Now, it must be mentioned that I am currently in Booney, PA. My Very Good Friend Mike is from Booney, PA, so I hold no partiular grudge against the town. But the truth is, when you get that far away from civilization, you're going to find a few nut jobs. Like Creepy Mullet Man, with whom I am currently engaged in a very riveting conversation.

So, Texas, huh? You're a long way from home.

Yup, sure am. (Maybe if I'm incredibly boring and can't come up with more than two words in response to any question, he'll give up.)

So, you wanna hang around here a while? (Nope, I guess my conversational abilities are of little concern. And thank you, thank you, thank you Very Kind-looking Man hovering nearby.)

No, I really need to get back to Pennsylvania tonight. (Duh. You're IN Pennsylvania. You're got to come up with something better than THAT.) Uh, well, um, gotta go. Bye. (Yeah, much better. Way to go.)

Okay, so I'm not going to pretend that attention from the opposite sex doesn't flatter me on occasion. Or that I'm too oh-so-cool-and-sly to try flirting back every once in a while. (Of course, my flirtation skills are severely lacking, but I do my best.) Take, for example, Very Nice Boy Jeff. Jeff worked in the machine shop and was, in fact, a Very Nice Boy. And cute. And best of all, he showed me, very patiently, how to build my parts. And he did a very good job of hiding his laughter when I couldn't even use the saw without his help. That's right, the saw.

I became quite fond of Very Nice Boy Jeff. I tried (mostly unsuccessfully, but I tried) to figure out his work schedule so that I could very conveniently show up when he was working. Oh, wow, Jeff, YOU'RE working again? Gosh, it seems like I'm always running into you these days. Haha. And I certainly wasn't shy about the compliments. Oh, Jeff, thanks you SO much. This looks really great. You are SOOOOO smart.

Now, maybe Very Nice Boy Jeff was only helping me because, well, he's a Very Nice Boy. Or because, quite frankly, it was his job to help me, and I was looking very lost and confused, and quite possibly on the verge of tears. But he was cute, and I was a girl, which automatically set me apart from, well, everybody else in the shop. So I used that to my advantage. Well, the best I knew how, anyway.

Okay, okay, so I know that it's what's on the inside that counts, that looks don't matter. So, just because Creepy Mullet Man looked creepy and had a mullet, doesn't mean he's not a Very Nice Man. But I certainly wasn't about to stick around to find out.