a story and conversation repository (est. 2000)

2018 ( 50 Years Old )

Marty and I were invited to dinner with a former work colleague (of hers). As we walked up the street to their house, we commented on the number of cars and that someone was having a party. It turns out the people having the party were our people. We somehow thought we were the only guests, but we were not, far from it.

There were maybe fifty people in the large victorian home and Marta and I knew exactly four of them—our host, his wife, and two unexpected people from our neighborhood. After taking in the scene, Marty and I looked at one another and broke apart doing what we do at such events from our pre-kid days, seperate-mingling. 

I'm not sure when or why we came up with our single-mingle approach, but it is just what we've always done. We'd occasionally bump into one another and then catch the other up on whoever we were talking with. That night, I came up to Marty's side while she was chatting with a charismatic fellow. After a bit, I could see he was smitten with Marta, something I've had to watch unfold many, many times in our decades together. They were talking about gardening, and he said he and his wife were avid gardeners, and we should come out to their home in the country for dinner and see what they've done. 

During his invitation, a woman appeared behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder, making a pouty face. Through slurred words she said that they were out of her favorite drink, and she didn't know what to do. He said he thought she might have had enough and introduced her to us. She was an attractive and well-dressed blonde. She distractedly said hello and then said she thought she saw another drink table and stumbled off. The gentleman resumed his dinner and garden-tour pitch. I began to walk away when he caught me and said that I should see some pictures of work they'd done earlier that day. 

He unlocked his phone and held it between the three of us. I was half paying attention because it is not possible to measure how slight my interest in freshly planted flowers is. His index finger poked the photos icon and the screen filled with an image of his wife's naked backside leaning over a porch railing. She looked over her shoulder provocatively at the picture-taker. My interest in mid-west flora suddenly spiked. 

As the three of us took in the image, he exclaimed in faux-surprise, "Oh my! How'd that get on there?" He quickly swiped to the prior image. This had the wife half-turned to the camera. Swipe. Fully turned to the camera. Uhh, Marty, do you know where my garden trowel is?

After that, he lowered the phone and said, "I'm sorry, I don't know how those got there. Apologies. It looks like I might not have any current pictures to show you. I guess you'll just have to come to the house and see the garden first-hand. I promise you won't be dissapointed."

And this day in August of two thousand eighteen still stands as the only day on record that Troy was more interested in gardening than Marty. And this interaction did spark an interesting conversation on the way home that if we did go see this couples' country garden, who between us may have gotten the better tour.