“Don’t you wanna stop talking?”

“I see gray hairs,” I said to a pretty lady I occasionally see when I walk my dog at nearby Boughton Park.
That’s a flirt, readers. I noticed her hair was pretty, and said so in an offhand, unobnoxious way.
She ate it up.
We talked at least 15 minutes. She also was walking her dog.
This was so contrary to how I was brought up. “No pretty girl will talk to you!”
I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Gender Relations. Hilda was my Sunday-School Superintendent neighbor. Together with my hyper-religious parents she convinced me at age-five I was SCUM.
“Don’t you wanna leave?” I kept thinking.
“No!” Yada-yada-yada-yada.
Topics I usually hold back got discussed:
“What you’re hearing is slight aphasia. I had a stroke almost 26 years ago,” I said.
I’m talking about myself, but no “see-ya-later.” I flirted, as it were, so keep talking. (I got the endorphins flowing.)
“‘A-P-H-A-S-I-A;’ Google it. It can be so bad the person can’t talk. In my case it’s only slight.”
“I don’t hear anything,” she said.
“You don’t, but my brothers do,” I said.
We also discussed lability, another stroke-effect. “You start talkin’ about my wife, and I start cryin’; that’s lability, poor emotional control.
What I always say is I’m running on seven cylinders, as opposed to a V8. Part of my brain was killed, but quite a bit was left,” I added. “My speech-center was killed, but something else is doing it. I also lost nine years of classical piano-training, and I no longer can hold a tune.”
On-and-on it went, our nervous dogs wondering what was going on.
We’re disproving Hilda and my parents. “No pretty girl will talk to you!”
She was probably in her 40s, and married of course. Yet even though my wife is gone, which supposedly makes me a lonely widower, I’m safe because I’m 75.
And not on-the-make, nor lonely.
We’ll meet again; probably another 15 minutes. I look forward to it.
Female company I enjoy, especially having thought I’d never get it.

• My beloved wife died over seven years ago.