Solar Tides

"Well, look who's comin' our way. Good God, what a woman!"

"Mmmmm," I said, not disagreeing.

"How lucky can a guy get! Check out that healthy stride. Since you can't see 'em too well from here, Wally, you'll just have to imagine those great legs of hers. Too bad she's not wearing shorts."

"Mmmmm," I repeated.

Ben and I were leaning against the wooden railing that surrounds the deck of the pool I'd built for my daughter and her friends. A dozen or so guests had arrived and were enjoying a drink or any one of a dozen brands of beer.

"When she gets up close, I want you to scoot behind her and take a good look at those wonderful calves of hers."

We'd enjoyed a head start. Ben and I were on our third—or fourth—martini, and it was Ben's wife, Kathryn, who was walking toward us. She'd driven over my struggling, recently-planted zoysia grass simply because she knew she could get away with it.

"Okay Ben, I'll admit it. Southwest University girls do have great legs."

"Kathryn had to climb four or five hills every time she went to class. Can't say that about your lazy U.T. coeds, Wally. Crisscrossing a campus that's nothing but flat ground doesn't do much for a girl's looks. And most of those tea-sip sorority sisters ride the shuttle bus or crank up their daddies' Thunderbirds and drive to class, I hear."

I said, "Some folks say Southwest girls have great calves because they've gotta start running from their brothers when they turn twelve. Others say it's because they'd been hitched to a plow for so many years."

"Hey, that reminds me—what's the difference between an Aggie cheerleader and a bowling ball?"

"Forget it, Ben. We're both plagued with the same old jokes."

"If only we had a view from the other side—what a gorgeous butt you'd see!"

"She always looks wonderful to me," I admitted.

"Makes love wonderfully too," said Ben.

"She sho' do...."

Ben did a slow motion, show biz double-take, and in his best Amos 'n Andy voice, he protested: "Now whoa dere, Andy—"

I finished the old minstrel show joke: "I mean, do she?"

Ben and I could recite the punch lines to at least a hundred high school jokes we'd shared, and—unfortunately for us—could still remember in their entirety.

Ben turned to face me directly and said, in a lowered voice, "For the life of me, Wally, I cannot understand why I ever screwed around on this wonderful woman."

But with his next breath, he said, "And those breasts! You can tell right away that they're the real thing."