My life’s been rather topsy turvy for the past several weeks. I’m still wrestling with the alligator-sized hole in my bathroom, my best-selling book about online dating for seniors is coming along fine, but my search for that blue-eyed cowboy has taken more time than I thought.
I wasn’t sure it was he, and as it turns out, I still don’t know. He didn’t answer for four or five days which I blamed on his calving duties. I don’t know a lot about cows, but I do know that when a heifer gets ready to have her calf, she doesn’t ask permission. When he finally answered, he didn’t say anything about his blue eyes, ignored the whole subject, if you can imagine. He typed, “It looks like you are standing by a lock,” which I was, from a trip last year through the Panama Canal.
I typed, “Well, it looks like you are standing by a pickup,” thinking this is not a road to excitement. I thought a glass of wine was in order and opened a new bottle.
Our texting went on for a few hours, off and on because those calves were popping out of their mothers, like balloons landing on a prickle of porcupines, and he was attentive to his cow duties if nothing else. He was gone for a while and when he finally came back, he texted, “I have a couple things I want to ask you.”
“Ask away,” I returned. I am pretty up to date on a lot of things, so figured he couldn’t stump me with many questions, as long as it didn’t have to do with birthing calves or Bernoulli. I never understood how Bernoulli helped airplanes fly and have long since given up.
“Correction, three questions,” he typed. “First, do you know how to swim.”
What? Swim? What’s he got in mind? I put my fingers to work typing fast, “Of course, I can swim, I was a lifeguard at my hometown swimming pool and passed the Marine Corps swimming test and I love the water.” So far, so good. “What’s question number two?” I typed, eagerly.
“Do you have a passport?”
That was a dumb question because of course, I have a passport as well as the “star” on my driver’s license. “No problem. I have a passport and love to travel.” What possibly could be question number three?
Another calf was popping, I guess, as he was gone for hour or more, leaving me waiting for the third in the questioning trifecta. I am not a very patient person and by this time I was getting pretty antsy.
My iPhone finally buzzed. A message, yay. “Have you ever had to pull a calf?” Was that his third question? Swim, passport, and calf pulling? Are you kidding? My romantic ideas about a blue-eyed cowboy were rapidly being deflated.
“Pull a calf?” I typed, “Is that your third question? No, I haven’t and don’t even really know what that means?”
He sent an icon of a cow, “You’ve never pulled a calf? I thought everybody in the west had. You’re in Idaho, right? Don’t you have cows?”
I was getting a little irritated and decided to ignore the question. “Why do you want to know if I have a passport and can swim? What does that have to do with calf pulling, anyway?”
“Not much, I guess, but I do have another question.” That came across really fast.
Another pause, long enough to refill my wine glass. “No, my third question is, ‘Do you want to go to Paris?’”
I paused, stunned. “Paris? You bet! Now, we’re cooking with gas,” I typed.
“How long does it take for you to pack?”
Ever the shy one, I typed, “Don’t you think we should meet first?” Holy cow, life is moving fast.
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