"You look like you lost your last friend," the fry cook commented from beside my booth. She held a full pitcher of dark, brown-red iced tea and offered a smirking smile. To me that look is always seductive on any woman. Her approach had not been noticed but there she stood invading my struggling consciousness. She was a model of the hard-living, thirty-something, outlaw females who staff truck stops and fast food places, doing minimum-wage jobs on the edges of society-often two jobs to provide for their children. There is in such women a tough sexiness that is both inviting and harsh, a hard beauty most folk overlook. I don't.

"Could be," I said, checking out her old stained plastic name tab. "Kathy, you looking for a new friend?" I led with libido. Old, worn-out dogs, especially hounds, are still dogs.

"Honey, don't con a con artist. You haven't got the gumption and I don't have the time," was her comeback. Well played. She enjoyed her put down with a deadpan countenance that was betrayed by twinkling brown eyes. Then she let me down easy. I've noted brunettes do that better than blondes and redheads. What's that about God taking care of fools and children?

"Don't fret, Hon, interest is always appreciated." Moving away from the sexual energy, she changed the mood, "Looks like you got your hands full. Lord, I didn't have that many papers in four years of high school. Your face reminds me of the look on a kid who sat beside me when Miss Burton busted him in World History my freshman year. He hadn't a clue about what she'd asked him." Kathy was comfortable in her analysis of my predicaments, personal and professional.

"What's your position on honesty?" I asked her. Then, thinking I needed to say more, I added, "You know…hypocrisy." I'd gotten frisky after our sexual sparring and her challenge of my flirting skills.

"Mind if I sit?" Kathy asked, checking out the place to see if there were any chores needing attending that took precedence over straightening me out. There didn't seem to be. She sat across from me. Maybe my sex appeal had not been so faded after all. Fools and children.

"Honesty is a good rule," she began. "Yes, it does keep things simple." Pausing, she looked off toward the quiet domino tables in the back of the long room. Then she said with solemnity and no hint of pretense, "Trouble is most of us don't take to rules. And you know 'simple' is just no fun."

Her plain face took on an aura of knowing. Could it be that a significant seminar had begun? Could a protégé of the Oracle of Delphi be passing as a pool-hall fry cook in a county seat in rural Tennessee? I had met a specter from the past-my Mr. Jones-in that pool hall...'more things than philosophies have dreamt of,' don't you know? Sometimes I forget that wisdom does show itself, offer itself, in interesting ways and in surprising places.




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