Did I tell you I got a note in the mail from Pudge?

My parents spent a recent weekend in Hartwell, Georgia – Daddy’s hometown. His childhood next-door neighbor Carolyn (whose playhouse he used to tinkle on) arranged a group dinner with a bunch of their high school classmates. Amazingly, Daddy’s relationship to Carolyn evolved from antagonistic urinator to honorary brother. Perhaps even more amazingly, Daddy and many of his high school classmates remain close friends. The supper party convened at a Greek restaurant, but despite the menu’s Mediterranean selection, a couple of Daddy’s male buddies ordered hamburger steak. Because of peer pressure, a recent increase in beef consumption or both, Daddy decided he, too, wanted a hamburger steak. But after Mother requested a Greek salad, he became confused and ordered a salad as well.

However, when the waiter delivered the hamburger steaks, Daddy insisted one of them belonged to him.

“No, you ordered a salad,” Mother reminded him.

“Oh.”

With Daddy’s excessive inhalation of hot dogs, bologna and chocolate, a salad served him well.

At another point during the trip, Mother and Daddy stopped by Bailes Cobb, a family-owned clothing store. Daddy’s old friend “Pudge” works there but was off that day, much to his disappointment. Throughout the remainder of the excursion and all the way home, Daddy continued lamenting not seeing Pudge. A couple days later Daddy received a card in the mail from Pudge, expressing her disappointment over missing him at Bailes Cobb and high hopes for his health.

“Did I tell you I got a note in the mail from Pudge?” he asked Mother the next day.

“Yes Robert.” He made the same inquiry throughout the next couple evenings.

“Did I tell you I got a note in the mail from Pudge?” he asked me last night.

“Yes, that’s really exciting.” (He had informed me several times.) “Why is her nickname Pudge? Is she fat or something?”

“She’s not fat at all. She’s a good-lookin’ woman. I think it has something to do with her nose,” he recalled.

“What’s her real name?”

“Beats me. Her last name used to be Seawright.”

Daddy’s long-term memory remains in-tact. For the record, he never knew her first name. To the Hart County High School class of ’65, she always has been and will be Pudge.