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2006-09-01 - 8:40 a.m.

"Just stay on the deck out of sight!”

When the preacher’s wife comes a visitin, I’m sent packin to the back yard!

Last night I was over at a neighbor’s house enjoying a cold Bud Light. Judy was sipping liberally from a large rum and Coke. Judy recently lost her husband of 40-plus years, and it’s been pretty routine this past summer for her to come by my house in the evenings for a drink and chat on the front porch, or for me to stop over there to imbibe and keep her company for a while. She had gotten some new deck furniture and wanted me to come see it and help come up with a small guest list for her Happy Hour on The Deck tonight. I was working diligently in my yard, but I abandoned my weed whacker and concerns about the jungle threatening to consume my property and hightailed it over for drinks. To hell that it was a school night, new deck furniture is cause to celebrate.

In addition to being a neighbor, I also worked with Judy for several years. Before retiring a couple of years ago she was director of our Early Childhood/Child Care department. We had a lot of school mishaps and headaches to talk about. And it appears all pending charges against the former mayor have been dropped—and the former mayor is now in the process of suing anyone and everyone who slandered her—so we had some good laughs and “hoorahs for Deb.”

We’d been at our cool drinks and visiting for about an hour when the phone rang. Lord Gawd A’Mighty it was the preacher’s wife and she was comin a visitin! I fell out of my chair in my haste to grab my beer can and hit the road home. Judy insisted I stay, we had, after all, put only a small dent in our beverages.

“Oh, shit no, I said. “I gotta get outta here!”

I was in my home-alone-working-in-the-yard attire: cut off, greasy sweatpants, and a holey, filthy t-shirt--and I was bare foot!

“Oh hell, you just stay out here on the deck. I’ll pull the curtain closed. I’ll visit with her inside.” Then she raced inside to brush her teeth to cover the smell of rum on her breath!

And there it was: I’d been exiled to the back deck!

The preacher’s wife arrived—I guess, I couldn’t see her, the curtains were pulled—and Judy commenced to chat with her over coffee. Me? I’m on the back deck, happy as a clam, slurpin up beer. I had already consumed one beer, I had another one opened and one (those new 16-ounce brews in the aluminum cans) in the cooler so I was set—for a while anyway.

But it wasn’t long before I wasn’t okay.

Judy’s deck is a second floor deck, and there’s no way off the deck other than going in through the house. The preacher’s wife was in the house—and I had to pee!

The coffee klatch inside was engaged in affable conversation. Meanwhile, out on the deck, I was pacing and looking for an escape route. I really had to pee, and with each passing minute I was growing more anxious. I had been banished to the back deck to avoid shocking the preacher’s wife, what the hell was she going to think if she peeked through the curtain and discovered me out there peeing in the flower pot?

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