Maybe Hick is Not Actually Trying to Kill Me, But Only Scheming to Get Rid of Me

About a year-and-a-half ago, I got the feeling Hick was trying to kill me. Accidentally, of course. Oh, his motives may have been intentional, but he planned to make it look like an accident.

Perhaps you remember me spilling Hick's beans right here on the innernets. There was the time he told me to take ALL SIX pills in a z-pack at once, the time he gave me my grandma's cane in the dark, which had been altered to no rubber stopper but a pointy duct-taped end, and the time he bladed the driveway gravel and denied it three different ways.

I'm trying to give Hick the benefit of the doubt. He is, after all, my Sweet Baboo. Maybe he doesn't actually want me dead, but only GONE.

Hick was trimming ice-storm-damaged trees and blading the gravel road yesterday when his buddy Buddy's wife stopped to thank him  She mentioned that her daughter lives in The Pony's college town, and that if he ever needs something, to let her know. In case his car breaks down, or some other pressing calamity. Hick told her, "If you ever make a trip out there to visit, I'm sure Val would go along with you."

REEEEEE!

That's the sound of Val's Crocs digging into the press-down tile on the concrete basement floor. Just one stinkin' minute! Does Hick not know my nature after 27 years of marriage? Like Stevie Nicks, I have never ever been a blue calm sea. I have always been a storm. The Pony comes by his not really caring about people naturally. By way of my genes. Not only do I not really care about people (hard to believe, I know), but I actively dislike a large portion of the human race. In fact, my personal motto, although I never asked my mom to make a cross-stitch for me to hang over the fake fireplace mantel, is PEOPLE PISS ME OFF!

I have no gripes with Buddy's wife. She's a likeable enough person. But that doesn't mean I want to be trapped in a car with her for nine hours. It's bad enough when I'm trapped with Hick, and don't have to hide my true nature. No way can I be congenial and polite for that long. Besides, there's the business of leisure time once there.

"Oh, you can stay in the hotel," said Hick magnanimously when I politely murmured (heh, heh) that I was not interested in a road trip with Buddy's wife. Sure glad I wasn't expected to share a bed with her at her daughter's house, like Matty Ross of near Dardanelle in Yell County had to share with Grandma Turner at the Monarch Boarding House in True Grit. AND how would I get around for a couple of days, assuming that The Pony would meet me for a meal, and then forsake me for his cronies and the 12th floor lounge with high-speed internet? There are no restaurants withing walking distance of our hotel. I guess I could squirrel away extra food from the breakfast bar...

Yeah. Nothing in that scheme of Hick's smacks of my demise. Just of my disappearance for a while. I can't imagine that he would want a few days away from me!