Pretty please

—“Um it was very very sweet of you…
…..just very very kind of you….”
“*****,” please, “puh-leeze, pretty-please; don’t lead me into another one of them crazy boy-girl relationships where I make the mistake of thinking the female is interested in me.
Your words could lead me astray; befallen by the ghost of Hilda Q. Walton, wherein ‘No pretty lady will ever be interested in you, Bobby!’”
(Are you?)
Or should I say “befallen by the fact Hilda’s hot-shot RCA-engineer husband was fooling around with the secretaries and receptionists in his office……
Driving Faire Hilda into a jealous rage, such that she noisily declared all males, including me at age 5, were SCUM.”
***** is my pharmacist — she’s head-honcho of my pharmacy.
Her son apparently is a serious railfan. I gave ***** one of my annual train-calendars, and she passed it along to her son.
I’ve given her my train calendar the past couple years.
Now her son’s bedroom is plastered with many of my train pictures; and he takes my calendar to bed with him.
He’s only six.
Mrs. Walton was my hyper-religious Sunday-School superintendent neighbor when I was a child.
Holier than holy! Worthy of the right hand of Jesus — a Bible-Beater; sanctimoniously full of righteousness and superiority.
That lede quote is from a voicemail ***** left me while I was at my urologist with my phone on “do not disturb.”
I play it over and over, and it’s probably a voicemail I’ll never delete.
Guilty as sin: I’m always a sucker for thinking some pretty lady might like me. That’s countering Faire Hilda with her noisy blustering that no pretty lady would ever like me!
So what’s next?
I could have e-mailed a response to *****, but I decided against it.
Careful dude: don’t get too involved!
Supposing she were interested in me?
The safest thing for me to do is to assume she’s not.
She’s a married lady, and her husband, who I’ve met, is a really nice guy.
But not too long ago she badmouthed him a little, or so it seemed; which has me worried.
My wife and I made 44&1/2 years, but not all marriages are made in Heaven.
If ***** is attracted to me in any way at all, it’s because we can talk.
***** seems to love talking, which was surprising to me, since she didn’t seem the type.
“We could talk forever,” she once said to me.
“Yeah, we probably could,” I thought to myself later.
Talk-talk-talk-talkity-talk! I could do that; but beyond that I’m leery.
With Faire Hilda mere talking between members of the opposite sex was EVIL and Of-the-Devil.
***** hits me pretty hard, and Hilda spins in her grave.
Yrs Trly doesn’t wanna make the many mistakes I made with a previous lady friend.
My response to her was clearly messy.
Never before had a pretty lady seemed interested in me; so tact and reason got tossed aside.
Then she wanted to walk dogs with me. Me, the lifelong scumbag? “I think she’s interested in me!”
Off-we-went! Me completely devoid of sense. She also did a few things which increased my thinking she was interested in me.
I’m not making those mistakes with *****.
Hilda’s noisy insistence no pretty lady would ever associate with me is what got tossed aside.
I have too many lady friends, and I attract ever more. Let ‘em talk or make ‘em laugh, and I attract ladies.
Perhaps my best first move was to not respond to *****’s voicemail. That first lady-friend I woulda. (Text, e-mail, FB message, etc.)
I decided face-to-face is a lot better than the written word.
The written word gets easily misinterpreted, plus with face-to-face I get immediate reaction.
So it will be face-to-face with *****.
I’ll try to not think ***** is interested in me. If she wants to talk, and that’s all I can do, she’ll let me know.
I think her voicemail indicates she likes talking.

• “RCA” is Radio Corporation of America; 1919-1986, based in Camden NJ.
• My brother and I photograph trains down near Altoona PA, where the old Pennsylvania Railroad crossed Allegheny Mountain. The railroad is now Norfolk Southern. Every year I take 13 of our 89 bazilyun photographs to assemble into a calendar — I do it with Shutterfly. I give those calendars as Christmas presents