PLEASE Allow Me To Share With You

I feel like I really must share with you what it's like to be with Farmer H 24/7/365/eternity.

"There, there now, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom," you might say if you were right here beside me, patting me on the forearm, speaking in hushed tones like you do in times of adversity. "You don't have to tell us all the details. Really. No, REALLY! I mean it! Shut your trap already! We don't want to hear about it! It's the stuff nightmares are made of!" At this point, you might be gripping my forearm with your talon-like fingers, imploring for all that is not NOT-HEAVENLY for me to stop, just short of putting a fork in me to make me realize that I'm done.

Heh, heh. You can't stop Mrs. Hillbilly Mom so easily. Especially through the innernets.

This one is fairly minor as my Farmer H experiences go. Just a drop in the bucket, not the full contents of the water tank (that the --Jo Bradleys swim in) for the Cannonball at The Shady Rest Hotel.

Today, Farmer H asked me to pick up some lunch for him!

REE! REE! REE!

Cue that stabby musical score.

Let the record show that I make a trip to town every day. I don't mind to bring something back to my Sweet Baboo. I usually tell him when I'm leaving, and ask if he wants anything. Even when he is nowhere around, and could be at that very moment in flagrante delicto with some brazen hussy across the state. Since he has retired, I figure that Farmer H knows I make a trip to town every day, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. I don't always ask, because the response has, for the most part, been, "Nothing I can think of." Because Farmer H himself often takes himself out to breakfast at the Country Mart deli, and makes numerous trips to town himself. We are only 5 miles and 10 minutes out of civilization.

Today, Farmer H sent me a text at 11:33 a.m.

"On your way home would you bring me a #4 lunch meal from Burger King they are under 500"

That was a bit unusual. Farmer H normally doesn't expect me to go out of my way for his lunch. He had been in the house earlier, and knew I was running behind. As much as a retiree with absolutely nothing to do CAN run behind. I'd already told him twice that I had nothing else to do today. Just go to town for my soda and lottery. Burger King is one town over. An extra four miles or so. Nothing impossible. Just out of my way. I texted him back.

"OK. I will go over to Burger King. Not in the shower yet. Hope you don't starve."

Knowing Farmer H like I do, I figured he meant that the meal was under $5. Not under $500, which would not impress me. Because Farmer H is known for eating a meal at the fast food establishments around his workplace all these past 23 years, some of them using a different number configuration for different meals than the fast food establishments in Hillmomba...I called him on the way to town around 12:15.

"So you asked for a #4? A lunch special? What is in that? Just in case the numbers are different."

"It's a chicken sandwich and a double cheeseburger. With fries."

"It's a meal. So you get a soda? I guess you want Diet Coke?"

"Yeah."

I got some tickets (HOS has a birthday coming up on Saturday, so they weren't all for me today) and then headed over to Burger King before getting my magical elixir. No need for my 44 oz Diet Coke to get hot and unfizzy. Farmer H's meal could cool off instead. After all, he was getting it delivered to him, and at no cost to his weekly allowance.

At the Burger King drive-thru, I ordered the #4 lunch special with a Diet Coke. The girl said okay, like that was really a thing. But I didn't see it on the menu, and my total was $8.17.

"Is that the lunch special? Because my husband told me it's under five dollars."

"We don't have anything under five dollars for the lunch special."

"What exactly is in that #4? He said it was a chicken sandwich and a double cheeseburger."

"The #4 is a Whopper."

"No. That won't do. I guess he was confused. Can I get a meal with a chicken sandwich and a cheeseburger?"

"You can get the two-sandwich special. You can get a chicken sandwich and a cheeseburger for that, but it's six dollars."

"OK. I'll do that. It's not the price that's a thing. I just want to get the right food he asked for."

You may know by now that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom hates to stand out. She would be BAAing along with all the other sheep, happy not to make waves, perhaps thinking to herself, "I'm NOT giving up MY wool!" but otherwise going along with the herd for shearing. If she was a lemming, she would most likely go right over the edge of the cliff with the rest of them, then whirl around on the way down and scrabble at the crumbling limestone rocks with her disturbingly human-hand-like lemming feet.

I bought the chicken sandwich and cheeseburger for over six dollars (cheese on the chicken sandwich) and took it home to Farmer H. Of course I let him know that Burger King had never heard of such a lunch special, and that I'd made a fool of myself to a twenty-something fast food worker while trying to get him what he'd asked for.

"What do you mean they don't have it? I get it all the time."

"In NEXT TOWN?"

"No. In HILLMOMBA. They have FIVE of those specials. All for four dollars."

"There is no Burger King in Hillmomba. I had to drive all the way to Next Town."

"Oh. I thought it was a Burger King. What is that one there?"

"You must mean HARDEE'S. That would have been so much easier. It's right there. And cheaper."

"Well. I'm sorry. I was confused."

"You don't have a soda now. It didn't come with one. I doubt it even has fries."

"That's okay. I have soda in the BARn. I can do without fries."

Attention to detail was never one of Farmer H's strong points. You'd think he could at least learn, over a 23-year span, the name of the burger restaurant in the town we live on the outskirts of.

Welcome to Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's new reality.