Now You Know Why the Aged Val Screams

One aspect of my upcoming retirement (Have you heard? Only one more year to go!) that I am NOT looking forward to is that of Hick being all up under me 24/7. Like a baby chick poking its head out from under a hen's wing, like a cold dog nose poking a stomach up under a shirt hem, like a tack placed point-up on the piano bench under the descending rear end of a middle school choir teacher...Hick will invade my space. Heck, he's already practicing.

Now don't get me wrong. I do not wish for any harm to befall our Hick. I simply want him to realize that we are not going to follow each other around and remain within arm's reach of each other. And by that, I mean HE is not going to follow ME so closely that at any moment he can reach out and touch me. Not gonna happen. Hick needs to get himself a routine that involves as much time away from me as possible. Like when he takes off for a haircut at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday, and returns around 4:00.

Tonight, I was at the sink washing dishes while waiting for a meatloaf to heat itself in the oven (NOW WITH TWO ELEMENTS!), and getting ready to shuck some corn. Storebought corn. We don't grow our own, despite what people may think about Hick's access to cobs. The phone rang, and announced that I had an incoming call from Genius Thevictorian. Of course I dried my hands on my sweatpants with the hole in the left hip area (who needs an apron in these modern times, asked the woman without a dishwasher) and ran to answer.

Because it was Genius, right before suppertime, an hour of which he is quite familiar, I knew that the call would last a while. So I went into the living room and sat down in the La-Z-Boy. Let the record show that the TV was not on, the shades to the front window were closed against the evening sun, and the room in no way was a welcoming haven to one returning home from work.

On any given night, Hick comes in the kitchen door, grumbles a few words mostly about my sister the ex-mayor's wife and how my day went, and then goes out the front door to reunite with his animals. When supper is ready, he sometimes comes back in, but in the summer, he sometimes stays out and eats later.

Tonight Hick walked into the living room and plopped himself on the short couch. Let the record further show that I was in the midst of a phone conversation with Genius. Hick sat there like a creepy creeper. Did he voice any greeting to Genius? Or have questions for him about Saturday's upcoming move? No. Genius said he had already called Hick this morning to work out the details. So there sat Hick. Not watching TV. Not looking out the window. Not talking. Just listening. In the dim living room, while I was in the middle of a conversation.

Am I the only one who finds this rude?

You'd think it was enough that I have some government entity (surely you have not forgotten that Val is a well-known conspiracy theorist in her spare time) monitoring my calls, without the added snooping of Hick. He stuck it out like a champ, through the mumbles of "Uh huh. Yeah. I'm not very talkative tonight. I've had somebody sitting right here listening to me for 15 minutes now."

Hick is not one to pick up what I'm layin' down. Sometimes, a mom just wants to talk to her oldest son, her shining star, about his Garmin exit evaluation, on which he received two top ratings out of three areas, and a personal comment from the evaluator that he would hire him back, any time, and that it had been like having a regular employee, not an intern. Or about how I saw some Totino's 79-cent frozen pizzas in Save A Lot today, and thought of him and that dog, Gage, who stole his last slice in his basement apartment last summer. Or listen to him give me a pep talk on standing up for myself against Sis in the Battle of Inherited Knick Knacks. Hick was the fifth wheel in that conversation. And the tiny spare. And the itty bitty one on the end of a stick the patrolman uses to measure the distance of the skid after an accident.

I'm not saying that I would ever feed Hick to a wood-chipper. But I understand how that happens.