Just a quick story that was loosely based on a single fact. All else that might implicate anyone, living or dead, is purely fiction and a creation from my head.

It Didn’t Take Much

            It didn’t take much to amuse him, but any diversion was more amusing than to be in a house with the loud and obnoxious woman that he called his wife. How he found her or how he found her attractive enough for him to marry her was a question that he asked himself over and over. He never came to a satisfactory answer.

            He had never been a speedy person by nature and his reluctance to return to his home and his magpie wife, caused him to dawdle more and more. Even the most mundane tasks that were considered boring by others were exciting enough to hold his attention.

            He began to create things, to invent things, and to liven up whatever he was doing, Walter Mitty-like. His persona as a jungle explorer emerged as he cut the grass or trimmed the hedges. He became a research scientist when he shoveled the snow from his walks and driveway. Indiana Jones-like, he dug for buried treasure as he spaded the garden. He became kin of the hill as he raked the leaves that fell from the huge Sycamore tree in their back yard. Watering the flowers, he morphed into a fireman battling and inferno as he held the hose in his hands or became part of the pit crew at the Daytona 500 as he washed their white Ford, Crown Victoria.

            Even if he rested from the rigors of his daily adventures on the front porch swing, he became a trapeze artist for the Barnum and Bailey circus; beautiful women relied on his strength and his ability to catch them.

            His trips to run errands caused his imagination to work overtime. With so much free time away for the house and his haranguing spouse, he looked for things to slow his return, not just to draw his attention from the things that waited for him at home. At first, he would find a place to park the car in the shade and relax, but his imagination wouldn’t allow him so much free time without some kind of stimulation. His alter ego felt starved and took over. He took the hair dryer from the bathroom and carried it in the car as he went on his excursions.

            Near the crest of a hill, he parked the Crown Vic at a wide spot on the highway and waited. As he heard another vehicle approach he would stick the hairdryer out of the side window in the direction of the almost always speeding automobile. It never failed to amuse him when he would see the frightened driver immediately hit the brakes to slow down. It was downright funny to him when the big eighteen wheeler, tractor trailer fought to control the big rigs as they slowed. The Walter Mitty inside him made him a state trooper just doing his job.

            The last I heard, he was pretending not to be a jailbird for impersonating an officer, but he looked on the bright side, he only had to put up with other convicts and not his wife.