Me and My Shadower

The best investment I ever made was the purchase of 18 storage shed contents for $1100. NO! WAIT! That's the 2nd-best purchase I ever made. Hick paid back the money in less than two months. This self-given gift has kept him occupied over 10 hours a day, seven days a week, what with sorting and transporting to his Storage Unit Store and selling and attending auctions to supplement his store inventory.

The BEST investment has to be the $5000 house. It also keeps Hick busy over 10 hours a day. Besides, it's a FREAKIN' $5000 HOUSE!

Without these distractions, life with retired Hick would not be so rosy for Val. During the short hours that he's home, it's like having a toddler, or an anxious house-pet. As with toddlers and pets, I've learned that mealtime runs smoother if you feed them first. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When home, Hick is the antithesis of Where's Waldo. He's more of a Here's Hick. I never have to look for him. He's always there when I turn around. Like The Sidler from Elaine's office at her J. Peterman job. The Sidler, without Tic Tacs in his pocket. If I make a sudden move, I'll run into Hick, who has somehow snuck up under my armpit when I was not consciously following his whereabouts. It's as if Hick has imprinted on me like a baby duckling. Where I go, he goes. A kangaroo and her joey couldn't be much closer. Hick shadows me closer than a double-crossed jewel thief tracking the ringleader in an effort to regain his cut.

Last week, Hick and I were having separate suppers. Of course I prepared his first. I do everything but shovel it into his mouth and pinch his nose shut for him to swallow. I leave nothing to chance. On this night, Hick was having a Terrible Tater, so-named by one of our old favorite restaurants. A Terrible Tater is a giant baked potato, topped with BBQ pulled pork, or beef, and other fixin's you might desire.

I admit that my version is more of a Naughty Tater. Not so terrible, in that it's not quite as large as those behemoths from the restaurant, and not quite as densely topped. Anyhoo... I had everything ready for Hick to make his own Naughty Tater. We differ on how we like it, with me preferring to slice mine down the middle, poke holes in it until crumbly, then add the toppings. Hick likes to slice his incompletely down the middle, then cut the halves into attached cubes of six or eight sections. From there, he dumps the toppings into the middle crack. He doesn't even distribute his toppings equally on the cubed sections!

All of the toppings were set out on the cutting block. Hick had to get nothing out of FRIG II, nor put anything away. Just slice his Naughty Tater and top it. Knife and fork were laid out beside a plate. A spoon was beside the sour cream. He had a plate of diced onion. A bowl of shredded cheddar. The tater was on the stove-top. The BBQ pulled pork in a bowl next to the tater.

Yes, everything was set out so that Hick did not have to reach between my belly and the counter to get to the silverware drawer. He could leave me working at the kitchen counter by the sink, slicing a lime for my Diet Coke, getting ready to warm the leftover chicken I was having.

Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw Hick take his tater to the cutting block, and start slicing. I turned to see the order he put the fixin's on. Just in case he wanted me to do it next time. Hick dumped the whole bowl of cheese into the middle, then slopped on some sour cream, then the onions.

I was sure Hick would next grab the bowl of BBQ pulled pork to dump on top of his Naughty Tater. But no. He carried that heaping (paper) plate to the counter on the other side of the stove. Shoved a bag of limes and a jar of peanut butter back against the canisters, and wedged his heaping plate so about 1/3 of it hung over the edge of the counter. It looked stable enough, but still kind of made me nervous.

In the meantime, I had picked up a pizza pan from the stove top, and was removing foil I had used at lunch while warming some taquitos. I had the roll of non-stick foil in front of me, ready to tear off a new piece to warm my chicken. I set the pizza pan back down and turned to throw the wadded-up old foil in the wastebasket under the counter on the other side of the sink, where it sits in the space left for the installation of a dishwasher 21 years ago.

As I turned back to tear off new foil, I was shocked to see that

HICK HAD PUT THE GLASS BOWL, EMPTY OF BBQ PULLED PORK, ON TOP OF MY PIZZA PAN!

Of all the places he could have put it, like RIGHT BACK WHERE HE GOT IT, on the stove top, he had instead put it dead center on the pizza pan I was working with. I had to put down the box of foil to move the bowl back to the stove top so I would have access to the surface of the pizza pan to apply my soon-to-be-torn-off foil.

"I can't believe you did that!"

"Did what?"

"You always have to be up in my space! I had that pan all ready to put on foil. You SAW ME just now take off the old foil. You can see that I had set out the box of new foil. I turned away, just for a minute to throw away that old foil, and YOU TOOK UP THE ONE SPACE I WAS WORKING ON!"

"I didn't see you do that."

"I was RIGHT HERE! How could you NOT?"

"I don't pay attention to stuff like that."

Seriously. For someone not paying attention, he sure can throw a monkey wrench dead center into my immediate plan.