Lunch With The King

For Sunday’s lunch at the Country Kitchen restaurant, Ginny ordered ham, sweet potato, okra & tomatoes, and black-eyed peas.

I ordered a turkey club sandwich.

My sandwich consisted of three slices of toast layered with turkey, bacon, lettuce, and thick circles of tomato all nestled in a mound of french fries. To hold the thick quarters of my sandwich together, the cook inserted long toothpicks, the kind with decorative green plastic frizzy on one end.

Ginny and I talked about some problems at her office—34 contracts called for a cash advance of 1/12^th the total; then, after that was already paid, the board of directors amended the amount of advance to 1/4^th the overall total; so Ginny has to go back and re-issue those 34 checks for ¼ minus the 1/12^th already paid.

Ginny views this as simple math!

She would.

I told her to drive her boss nuts by asking how much each check should be for.

Here’s a 2006 photo of Ginny, the happy accountant, balancing our own checkbook, figuring our income tax, or something like that, in her home office:

Sunday, we also talked about faith.

As I mulled over my sense of failure, frustration, and feelings of uselessness, I asked her why she always seems so content, confident, satisfied, and serene.

She said, “I have faith in God. I know He will work things out right. Honey, you need to believe your own writings more”.

I’d finished all but one triangle of my club sandwich by then.

I called the attention of the fair maiden to the triangle remaining on my plate.

I grasped the green frizzy end of the toothpick and slowly tugged it out of the bread triangle. I brandished it in the air over my head and proclaimed, “I am the true and rightful king of England”!

Ginny laughed, saying, “That’s supposed to be drawing a sword from a stone”.

I told her, “That's in Europe. This is the Americanized version”.

She laughed harder.!

People at other tables stared at us.

She laughed harder and harder!

I love to talk with her.

I love to listen to her.

I love to hear her laugh.

I love to see her happy.

I love her.

And the woman is crazy about me.

I’d like to think that she married me for my legendary (and mostly imaginary) sexual prowess; but it turns out that she’s kept me around all these 40 years for comic relief.