It’s Super Bowl Sunday and everyone I know (except me) is excited for a few hours of watching a game of which I have no interest. It seems that I was born without the football gene, and although I have tried to locate one, I never found it. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though, because as an enthusiastic teacher, I pretended to watch nineteen years’ worth of high school football and about fifty years of college football.
As luck would have it this year, my online dating acquaintance, his name is Luke, invited me to watch the Super Bowl, making it date number four. (As I type the word “superbowl,” I find it curious as to why spellcheck demands that it be capitalized, like it is an important holiday, like Thanksgiving.) Anyway, Luke is a decent, hardworking guy, but knowing that I had sworn off football, I smiled as sweetly as I could and suggested a nice candlelight dinner for Valentine’s Day, but he claimed it was too hard to get a dinner reservation and he wanted me to meet his friends. The party was at the home of a friend, a rancher on a real working ranch with cows and horses and everything. I sighed and volunteered to make a pie for the food table in my hotel kitchenette and got busy with an apple-blueberry pie. When he picked me up, he handed me a bouquet of red roses, which almost made up for a Valentine’s Day dinner. I told him I had to do some writing, so needed to leave early, only a slight fabrication of an excuse.
I ignored the game, of course, and wandered around the ranch house, checking out the food, noting that most of the snacks were on my keto diet, lots of meat, cheese, olives, and pickles and that my apple-blueberry pie was down to less than a half pie, which made me happy. Luke and his friends were circling the food table, too. Most of his friends were a little younger than I, but there were a couple that were geriatric eye candy. One blue-eyed cowboy, who might be my age, came up behind me, “Ma’am, is this your pie? It’s mighty good. Luke told me you made it.”
He was handsome and I blushed, hoping he didn’t notice and said sweetly, “Yes, apple-blueberry, something my grandmother taught me. Do you want a cup of coffee? I’m headed to the kitchen, and I’ll get you one.” I hoped I wasn’t having another hot flash, but even at 75, they sweep over me from my nose to my toes without warning.
I got two cups of coffee and handed one to the blue-eyed cowboy, almost spilling it. I looked for Luke, but he was engrossed in the game, so I sat down at the kitchen table with blue-eyes and since I am a wonderful conversationalist, I got tongue tied, and I asked him what he did with cows.
He looked at me and smiled, “I just help out, right now, I’m calving out heifers.”
I was thinking fast, because I had no idea what he’s talking about, and I didn’t want him to know it, so I just nodded and said, “I write books and I need to get back to the hotel because I’m headed out tomorrow.” Still smiling, he stroked his silver moustache, and I began fanning my hot flashes with a napkin.
“I could drop you off, if you want, cuz I’m headed back toward town. I sure liked that apple-blueberry pie,” he winked as he put on his sweat-stained cowboy hat, touched the brim and said, “Ma’am,” and he started toward the door.
I liked this cowboy, whatever his name was, but I’m not quite ready to jump in an old pickup with an old cowboy. I looked at the score board on the television and saw that it was the second quarter, two minutes until half time, which really meant at least ten more minutes. Luke was watching the game and had his back to me with one hand on a beer and the other on a piece of mincemeat pie, not apple-blueberry. I like Luke but meeting this cowboy who gave me hot flashes and made me tongue tied showed me that there are lots of fish in the sea or in cowboy terms, lots of cows in the corral. That’s date number four, we’ll see what happens. When you think of it, maybe there is more to Super Bowl Sunday than meets the eye.
