Wanted: Good Man With a Chainsaw

I was out last night and ran into a friend of mine that was with several of her friends. I met everyone and did my best to keep up with nine new names (alliterative, eh?) but even the great Stan doesn't always do well at this. I have already been spanked for getting one of the names wrong in an e-mail. I usually do pretty good with names though. I have been on several cruises and usually get the nine new names down within five minutes. Then I start guessing where people are from. I usually cruise alone, so my table mates sometimes think I must be part of the ship's entertainment. I try not to guess weights, though....especially toward the end of the cruise.

But, as I am wont to do, I digress. Last night, after the introductions were made and names were forgotten, the group dynamics adjusted and people returned to their normal conversation. I was talking with my friend and her date. I don't see this woman very often so I wasn't quite sure how long they had been dating or how serious they were. I have often thought that it would be easier to catch up if there was a set numerical designation for where a relationship stood at the moment. Something like, "Hi. This is my date Fred. We are currently a 12 on the Oprah Relationship Intensity scale." On a 30 point scale, I think a 12 would be somewhere around the point of "I haven't met his family yet, but his teenager answered the phone the other day and she knew who I was." Come to think of it, the one or two times my daughter answered the phone and talked to someone I had been dating, she just told them to run. I will have to remember to change the will.

As we all talked, the woman next to me told one of the others that right now what she needed was a "good man with a chainsaw." I have heard a lot of wish lists...but a chainsaw was a new one. She had a couple of trees down in her yard and needed help getting them taken care of. I thought about it and considered that as single people we all probably have adjusted what we "think" we want in someone of the opposite sex based on what our practical needs were at the moment.

I am doing some landscaping in my patio area and I was at Home Depot yesterday buying plants and flowers. I am not that experienced at getting all the heights of the plants arranged and laid out where the end result looks good. Last year I planted a bed and four weeks later the three rows were neatly staircased from front to back. In four more weeks the second row was so tall that you couldn't see the back row.

So there I was, standing in the garden department, not looking much more adequate than I would standing in the "feminine needs" section of Kroger, thinking to myself, "Right now, I could use a 'good woman' that knows flowers." Of course, it also crossed my mind that maybe a "bad" woman that knows flowers would be nice too. After all, you can't garden all the time.

All in all, I suppose it would be nice to pick particular attributes for people as we move through various stages and times. Someone that can garden in the spring, someone that looks good in a bathing suit for the summer, someone that likes to hike in the mountains in the fall, someone that likes to chop firewood in the winter. What a woman.

In the meantime, I personally am able to move fallen trees with pure mental concentration...and a phone call to the tree guys.