The Lice Storm

Story Sent in by Josephine:

It was a blustery winter day in south Jersey when Jason and I met for the first time. As we sat down for lunch, he showed me his winter hat.

"It's reversible," he said proudly, and showed me how to reverse his hat. He handed it to me and I tried it out, myself. It reversed, all right.

When lunch was about over, he scooped the reminder of his food into his jacket pocket, just as it was, without even another bag as a liner. "Like a feed bag," he said. He then asked me, "Want to try on my hat? It's really warm."

I declined but he kept asking. "It's really warm," he said again, "Don't worry, I don't have lice." He then ducked his head toward me and ran his fingers through his hair, right over the table. "See? No lice."

I believed him. I just didn't want to try it on. We put on our jackets. It looked like a dark gravy stain was forming around his jacket pocket where he had stuffed his leftovers.

When we left, he asked me, "Want to go to Walmart? You can buy a hat like mine."

"No thank you," I said.

After a short walk he said, "If you don't believe me about the hat, you're not going to believe me about other important things in this life. We're not a good match."

By now that jacket stain was off the hook. It was hard for me to pay attention to anything else. He went on to Walmart by himself and I went home.

He wrote me an email a short while later in which he asked me for my address. "I can ship you a hat from Walmart," he said. "Also I need your credit card info."

My winter ended up being much warmer without that bozo in my life any further.